primarium propositum persequentes – pursuit of primary purpose

Main menu

Post navigation

About Brian

Passionate follower of Jesus. Member of a family that keeps on growing because I keep on meeting up with more great people from every nation and background who I belong to because of Jesus. Husband of an amazing woman, father of four forgiving kids and eight almost perfect grandkids. And loving it.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “You have said so,” Jesus replied. (Mark 15:2)

Pilate then went back inside the palace,
summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Is that your own
idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?” “Am I a Jew?” Pilate
replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it
you have done?” Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my
servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my
kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus
answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came
into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth
listens to me.” (John 18:33-37)

The events of the Easter story
are the culmination of a long journey. When the Son of God quietly appeared out
the back of a Bethlehem motel, nothing was happening to herald its
significance. Even when the angelic choir appeared it was witnessed only by
shepherds. When a particular star was noticed by some Persian astrologers,
their journey didn’t really bring the brass bands into the streets for a
parade. In spite of this, the reality was that more than two thousand years of
history was waiting for this moment. Every book in the Old Testament contained
mysteries that would only be revealed when Jesus came.

The journey from Bethlehem to
Calvary was similarly a somewhat mysterious affair. Jesus was the Messiah but
the only people who were willing to acknowledge this was a motley crew of
individuals with questionable credentials by any standard. But the cross and
the resurrection to follow were the events that separated history and changed
the world. Looking back through the window they provide, we can see a clear and
consistent storyline where the small events that happened over three years of
Jesus’ ministry lead very clearly to his appointment with Calvary.

I am convinced that Jesus is the
rightful King of the universe. The world as we know it and the people who
inhabit it were created to be part of the realm over which he ruled. I believe
that what we should be celebrating each year is the coronation ceremony of our
king. What was a symbol of fear and shame in the eyes of the world was actually
the accession of our king to his rightful throne. If it is hard to think about
the cross as a rite of passage to the throne, then perhaps it is because we
have not fully realised that Jesus is a very different kind of king from any we
may be otherwise aware and he rules a very different kind of kingdom than any
other. It will be vital for us to understand the differences lest we end up
trying to build the kingdom of God as an earthly kingdom rather than one that
represents the culture and glory of heaven.

WHO????

It is clear that there was
contention from the very beginning. You can’t imagine a baby born in a stable
in Bethlehem being a threat to anything; nor can you believe that the son of a
carpenter from a no-name place like Nazareth would amount to much. But as the
old man Simeon said of him, “This child is destined to cause the falling
and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against….”
(Luke 2:34) The fact was and is that the presence of Jesus on the earth
was always going to threaten the incumbent illegitimate rulers. We can see
through the course of his ministry that he didn’t walk up and down outside the
temple with placards, nor did he abuse the authority of Rome, but his life, ministry
and message posed a direct threat to each of them. If we can gain an
understanding of why this was so, we will better understand how the cross and
resurrection stand as ultimate signs of the battles that go on in every
generation. We might, then, be better placed to know how we should engage with
the illegitimate kingdoms of our own day.

The first of those authorities
was the ruthless domination of Rome. Rome’s presence in Judea and Galilee was
represented by various officials (including Pontius Pilate) and the Herodian
kings (Herod the Great and Herod Antipas). Jesus was born during the last
decade of the rule of Herod the Great, and it was this old Idumean puppet ruler
who had ordered the children from Bethlehem to be killed when informed by the
Persian magi that the signs told them of the birth of a king. Jesus had
experienced a period of exile in Egypt as a result of Herod’s paranoid
ruthlessness. It was his son, Antipas who arrested and beheaded John the
Baptist and the same ruler to whom Jesus was sent, at first, by Pilate on the
night of his arrest. The passage we are looking at today records the final
encounter between Jesus and the Roman authorise as Pilate tries to find a way
to avoid trouble and avoid sending Jesus to the cross. Pilate’s primary concern
is to find out whether Jesus is some kind of “king.” Rome either made
you a vassal or a victim. Kings needed to be appointed by Rome or be executed.

The second group of having
adversarial authority during the life and ministry of Jesus was the various
groups recognised as governing the religious life of Israel. They had the
scriptures, they governed what happened in the temple, celebrated the
festivals, policed the rabbinic traditions based on various interpretations of
the Scriptures. Their power base was vested in the Jewish ruling council known
as the Sanhedrin. This Sanhedrin was the Supreme Court of Israel and exercised
immense authority within the Jewish communities of Judea and Galilee. Their
fierce determination to protect their heritage from Abraham and Moses was the
stand out reactionary group within the whole of the Empire. The Romans tried to
find a way of working with them without relaxing their hold on power, but it
was an unholy alliance from both points of view. The groups involved under this
umbrella include the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes and Teachers of the law.
They are all represented throughout the gospel accounts and are ubiquitous
opponents of Jesus and his ministry.

The third group is a little
harder to define but very easy to identify: I am referring to the Satan and the
powers of darkness. This group has two distinct roles. The first is to empower
and manipulate the people groups mentioned above and the second is to be
directly involved in killing, stealing and destroying the lives, vocations,
hopes and futures of people in all walks of life through indiscriminate acts of
violation. We are told later in the New Testament that Satan uses four
different weapons to usurp the authority that belongs to Jesus: control,
manipulation, deception and direct destructive force (Ephesians 6:12). The
first time we get a clear picture of demonic activity follows the baptism of
Jesus at the Jordan. Jesus is strategically led to the desert to confront the
devil in a direct series of encounters. Jesus successfully repels the Satanic
suggestions (unlike the first Adam who succumbed). We are told the “devil
left Jesus until an opportune time”(Luke 4:13) If you have any familiarity with the stories
in the gospels you will notice that Satan shows up frequently: in the form of
demonised people and through demonically concocted natural and human
circumstances (storms on the lake). At the end when Jesus goes to Jerusalem for
the last time, we are told Satan enters Judas (Luke 22:3) and tries to sift
Peter like wheat (Luke 22:31).

WHEN??????

I would love you to think with me
as to when Jesus became King. I am aware that some will want to point out that
Jesus was always a king and that what was happening from Bethlehem to Calvary
was the king taking back territory that was rightfully his. Of course, that is
true. The “when” question for you is to ask “When did Jesus take
that rule back?”

Another group of people might
want to tell me that even though Jesus has appeared as Saviour and Lord, his
kingly rule waits for his second coming. I think the traditional way of saying
this is, “Jesus, Saviour, Lord and soon-coming King,” or the Aimee
Semple McPherson version, “Saviour, Baptiser with the Spirit, Healer and
Coming King.” This, of course, has truth at its heart as well. Jesus final
coming will be the consummation of the ages and will see satanic presence in
the world completely destroyed. The question for this group is going to be,
“When did Jesus begin to take up his rightful rule of the universe?”

My own view is that, just as
Jesus was the “Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the
world,”(Revelation 13:8) we all know that the “slaying” took
place at a particular time and in a specific place. It is that time-and-place
event that we celebrate at Easter. It is important. No, it is the very core of
everything about our faith. No cross, no Christianity. No resurrection, no
Christianity. No cross, no kingdom of God. No resurrection, no kingdom of God.
As Paul tells us, it is the bottom line. (1 Corinthians 15). But it is not the
bottom line for religious or ceremonial reasons. It is not just to keep the
paperwork right. It is because of what was happening through the cross and what
happened at the resurrection that makes it the bottom line.

My proposition goes like this:
Jesus became king on the day we call “Good Friday.” Isn’t it amazing that the cross is the
pinnacle of the glory of Jesus Christ, like one of the old song declares:

“This is Jesus in his glory,

King of heaven dying for me.

It is finished he has done it.

Death is beaten; heaven beckons me.”

In the eyes of this world’s kingdom, it is a symbol of failure
and the worst kind of shame. It was designed by the Romans to be the ultimate
deterrent. Less than a hundred years before Jesus, the famous slave/gladiator,
Spartacus had rallied thousands of other gladiators to oppose Rome. After a few
successful battles (The Third Servile War) Crassus was dispatched with eight
legions. When the rebels were defeated, 6,000 of them were crucified along the
Appian way as a symbol of Rome’s attitude to rebels. It was so with the death
of Jesus of Nazareth. The charge sheet was nailed above his head. The words
were written in three languages, Greek, Latin and Hebrew: “This is Jesus,
the King of the Jews.”

I know there have been many
theories about Jesus going to hell and taking the keys from Satan and all of
that. Some of it has modest Biblical warrant. What we know for sure is that it
was Jesus’ death that defied the power of sin and death.

When you were dead in your
sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.
He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal
indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away,
nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he
made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians
2:13-15)

So, the cross of Jesus Christ was
the event that declared his victory. It was his version of a triumphal march
into the city. Funny that he had experienced a prophetic event less than a week
before as he entered the city on the colt of a donkey. Brian Zahn has recently
made a compelling connection between the coming of Jesus to the city about the
same time as Pontius Pilate came to the city from the base of his operations in
Caesarea. He came to personally supervise things during the most volatile time
of the year, at the feast of the Passover. Zahn points out that Pilate entered
the city riding on a horse – may be a white horse, who knows. The symbols of
Rome’s power accompanied him: enough soldiers to quell any riot that might
occur and enforce any order Rome might feel like imposing. It was a preliminary
show of force designed to warn everyone to behave. He represented the most
powerful ruler in the world at that time.

Jesus came differently. He came
on a small colt. It might have been so short that Jesus had to drag his feet
along the ground. He came with no soldiers. He came with no preparations for
any kind of fanfare. The closest thing to weapons on display were palm branches
being laid out on the road in front of him. There was no kind of coercion at
all, but the people began to shout out the messianic greeting from Psalm 118, “Blessed
is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.” This
was brought about by a different presence than that of the Roman provincial
governor. When the religious authorities berated Jesus and told him to stop the
people from making a messianic claim, Jesus could only reply that if they were
stopped, the stones would cry out in their place. Such was the presence of a
very different kind of coming King. The promised Messiah (which means ‘King’ of
course) was the Son of David promised through the pages of the Scriptures.
There was another significant difference between the Roman ruler and Jesus.
When Pilate arrived in the city, he would have gone to his lavish well-guarded
quarters and rested, away from the troublesome belligerents. When Jesus came to
the end of his parade, he fell down and wept for love over the resistant
stubbornness of people whom he wanted to protect and nurture.

This king’s coronation was
celebrated differently. This King was laying down his life to defeat the very
powers of sin and death. He was declaring the universal advance of the kingdom
of God. It began through his own ministry and then through the 120 who would
remain in Jerusalem. The church would be become the body of Christ in every
part of the earth to make known to earthly and the heavenly authorities that
the rule of God was not by intimidation and control. It was not by manipulation
or by deceit. This power would not be accessed by destroying what was innocent
and good. It would be the power of sacrificial love. It was the power of
redemption. Jesus coronation trumpeted a sound that few people at the scene
understood. Sin and darkness were held up to ridicule. They were publicly
shamed by divine love and the offer of free and full pardon and redemption to
every person. This kind ruled through that very love. It is the only mark of
his rule. The justice he brings is not about winning or losing. It is about
redemptive purpose. The coronation of this king heralds the opportunity for
people to be reconciled to God and to their vocation as children of God. It is
an opportunity for individuals to celebrate the fact that they bear the image
of God. They are designed to carry his presence and to fulfil his purpose. He
is the king of that kind of kingdom.

HOW????

When Jesus uttered the words
“It is finished,” we have to be clear about exactly what was
finished. If you read through the sermons in the Book of Acts and the
references to the cross in the letters it is clear that the power of sin and
death were defeated. Satan’s weapon for keeping people separated from God was
unforgiven sin. The death of Jesus on the cross, as told by Jesus and the
apostles, was a “ransom for many.” I am not going to pour through the
atonement theories. I am more interested in outcomes than theories. All I know
is that all of us now have access to God. Our sin has been carried where we can
never find it. Satan’s basis of power is broken. Jesus has assumed his place as
King of his Kingdom and Head of his Body, the church. It is his resurrection
that declares the ultimacy of a new life. We are raised with him. This is a
present reality as well as a future hope. We get the chance to live a new life
with new citizenship (of heaven) and a new mission – to finish the job.

When Jesus came back to Galilee
from the wilderness, his agenda was obvious: “The times have been
fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.”
(Mark 1:16) If the kingdom of God was “at hand” it is logical to
assume that the presence of Jesus represented such a kingdom. When you have a
few hours free to do something important, I suggest you read through one or
other of the gospels and see precisely how that was worked for Jesus. It is the
presence of Jesus himself that makes the kingdom of God near. As you come to
each story, notice how Jesus turns each incident into a manifestation of the
kingdom of God. You should also see how different the kingdom of God is and how
differently Jesus models it. I dare you to remain unchanged in less than three
chapters. More to the point, Jesus was the King doing royal kingdom of God
works all the way to the cross. When he healed the king of health exercised the
will of heaven over another ‘king’ (Satan) who wanted to steal that person’s
health. When he cast out a demon, it was the king of freedom exercising his
will over the ‘king’ (also called the ‘prince of this world’) of oppression and
bondage. When an adulterous woman was brought to him on the assumption that she
should be punished, it was the king of forgiveness ruling over the king of
guilt and shame.

On all of these were occasions,
the kingdom of God was advancing. Jesus told a crowd that this kingdom had been
happening since the time of John the Baptist. (Matthew 11:12) There can be no
kingdom without a king. Otherwise, it would have to be an ‘earldom’ or a
‘dukedom’ or, more commonly a ‘selfdom.’ This is more important than it may
look. Cultures like my own (Australian) are heavily weighted toward
self-centeredness and self-determination. As such, we tend to preserve our own
‘selfdoms.’ As a result, we like the idea of building communities based on
kingdom values just so long as the idea of serving the ‘King’ is conveniently
set aside. This is a problem in the church. We have churches that are
profoundly committed to espousing kingdom values -e.g. providing amazing and
heartfelt care for the poor. They are willing to suggest that the work of
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked is a kingdom work of and by itself.
And there is no doubt; it is wonderful work. My issue is that it is not
necessarily kingdom work. Jesus, himself, tells us how to distinguish a kingdom
of God work:

“You are the light of
the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a
lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives
light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before
others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in
heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)

When people glorify the God, we
serve because of what he has done through us, we can be assured that it is a
kingdom of God work. Jesus made it quite clear and public that he was acting
only on the initiative of his Father. He constantly pointed people to his
Father and not to himself. When people saw the kingly works in operation, they
praised God for what they saw. Our culture loves people who do good works as
long as they are detached from any association with King Jesus. As a result, we
have been too willing to oblige them. As I said before, Jesus was very up-front
about his relationship to the Father. Numerous times in the gospel of John he
is recorded as saying, “I only do what I see the Father doing.”[1] The work of the kingdom is to follow this
model explicitly. We are to live the whole of our lives out of this
relationship and do the works that flow from it. Just think for more than two
seconds what is happening when we offer people some good works that might well
cause people to say nice things about us, but to deny the Person to whom they
belong and to suggest that they should happen without such a relationship. At
best we are stealing his glory. At worst we are refusing to proclaim a gospel
that has the power to change lives forever.

So, the church is to continue the
ministry of Jesus – i.e. of living as servants of the kingdom and allowing
others to know the good news that it is accessible. The church is meant to be
the people living on the earth who, by the presence and power of the Spirit,
give this kingdom tangible and visible form – everywhere. It means we will be
challenging every other kingdom that happens to be operating in its place. I
don’t know whether you are aware of it or not, but there is no space on or
around the planet that doesn’t have some kind of incumbent ruler. Something or
someone will always be exercising transcending influence. You have to read
Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about ten times to get a feel for this. I would
suggest you read it in two parts. Read 1:1 to 4:16 ten times. Make some notes.
Tell the story it is telling in your own words and then make a summary of what
it would look like if what you have been reading was happening. Then read 4:17
to the end the same number of times. Try not to get bogged down in detail. Try
to catch the flow of what is being said. Then do the same as before: tell the
story it tells and then figure out what it would look like if that stuff was
happening. And if you still have the inclination at the end of all that, figure
out what steps need to be taken to get from here to there. Among other things,
the Ephesian letter gives a consummate picture of how the church. In my way of
thinking, it is an apostolic view of the church in the real sense. Here are
three mountain peaks on the horizon of Paul’s letter:

ONENESS “Heirs together with
Israel, members together of one body and sharers together in the promised in
Christ Jesus” Ephesians 2

INTIMACY “We can all approach
God with freedom and confidence.” Ephesians 3/4

FULNESS “Until we all reach
unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ.” Ephesians 4

This is the way Jesus will make
his kingly rule known. People who live in the communities of which this kind of
church is a part will get to see the Jesus of the gospels. They will see it
only if the church makes it tangible. He must be the tangible head, and the
church must be his tangible body. There are a thousand ways this can be made
known, and we have to learn to excel in them. It’s simple, but not easy. But it
is the only thing worth pursuing for every church everywhere.

WHY??????

Why is it essential that we
recognise the cross as the coronation ceremony for our King? I think there are
two things to be said. The first is written about in Ephesians chapter three
and the beginning of chapter four. The church is to make known the mystery and
plan of God. That mystery is the fact that a new kind of humanity has been
invented: people in Christ – not Australian people, or Chinese people – just
people in Christ. When Paul prayed for this group of people, he prayed that
they would know the love of Christ and the unity of the faith. Love and unity
are the markers of a new kingdom. When this kingdom fully comes, we will have
become the new heaven and the new earth spoken about in Revelation 21 and 22.
That’s what we are supposed to be prophetically foreshadowing. We are meant to
be the living testament to that ultimate reality. It is not about an event
where those of us who are in Christ will have the pleasure of seeing all the terrible
people burning in hell – as some preachers would like to paint a picture. Yes,
there will be a final judgment and a separation, but the consummation of the
ages will be the completion of what Jesus began. It will be completed as the
church fulfils is calling on the earth. We are already part of a city God is
building, not made with hands, eternal in the heavenly realm. It is an
operation that runs on love and unity because that’s how heaven works. God’s
kind of love displayed by Jesus and commissioned for the church is the
sacrificial Calvary kind of love. It is the combination of John 3:16 and 1 John
3:16.

For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the
world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him

This is
how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought
to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.

God’s kind of unity is declared
openly by Jesus in John 17 where he prays for the disciples of every
generation, asking that they may experience his indwelling presence in such a
way that they will become one after the relationship between Jesus and his
Father. Because God’s kingdom is love-based oneness, it can only happen through
free-will choosing. There is no love without free-will. It’s the same as the
love that causes a man and a woman to stand somewhere before God and commit
their lives to one another because of love that has come from their choosing.
Its the same as the love we have for our children – who have their own
free-will. We love them freely and wonderfully. Hopefully, they grow up loving
us because they choose to. This new heaven and new earth will be comprised of
people who have made that choice about Jesus. Because it is a matter of
free-will, then it is possible for us to choose not to love and to choose not
to pursue oneness. The resurrection of Jesus declares this calling valid. His
presence and the Holy Spirit power that has been poured out makes it possible.

Let’s agree that these must be
the things that shape us and our mission on the earth.

CONCLUSION: VICTORY is through DEATH and
RESURRECTION

Jesus’s accession to the throne
of the universe was through death leading to resurrection. The cross can only
be associated with death. Everyone who went to a cross went to a horrible
death. No one survived the cross. Jesus not only rose from the dead but pioneered
a way of life that was going to celebrate both cross and resurrection. Death
now becomes the doorway to a new life. This is the new principle. Paul was
clear enough about. He said he faced
death every day in some way. And so do we. There are all kinds of things that
happen in our lives where we experience the pain and suffering of ‘death:’ when
a marriage fails, when we suffer some sort of debilitating sickness when
someone close to us dies – and a million other ways.

We are the people whose life is
defined by the resurrection from the dead. We need to have no fear of death,
not in the metaphorical sense nor the literal. Jesus’ resurrection is the
guarantee of a new life following death. It is weird to the cultural
sensitivities of the kingdoms of this world. In those kingdoms, death either
rules (as it does in some cultures where they are shaped by death) or it is
avoided. Christians are the only ones who can face death with all of the
sadness that it may bring, but with hope. That hope is the new life that Jesus
walked out of the tomb to proclaim. It is our heritage, our privilege and our
hope.

We need to become the people who
have twenty stories to tell of resurrection. Sadly, so many believers are still
locked into the pattern of this world. They remain imprisoned by some death
they have experienced but have not embraced the resurrection from death that
Jesus will always offer. Our Christian lives begin with this kind of
experience: we commit to Christ and are baptised. That baptism is a burial ceremony
of our former life, and it is the sign of rising from the watery grave to a new
life – totally free from any obligation to our old “master” and
freely bonded to our new master, Jesus. The rest of our Christian life ought to
boast of similar experiences as we “put to death” things that need to
die and “bury” things that have died. It seems that we are more
likely to dwell on the death when we should be celebrating the resurrection.
And by the way, that process is called “redemption.” It is a new life,
a better life, renewed life is given in the face of death. When we face our
physical death, it should be nothing more than a macro-version of what we have
known in many foreshadowing experiences throughout our lifetime.

So, Jesus has become the king. He
is a different kind of king than any we have seen or will see among the samples
of human kingdoms. The realm it creates operates through the same kind of
self-giving love to build a new heaven and a new earth ruled by this kind of
love. You can see the battle lines being drawn even as we say this. Just think
about a few community spheres where you spend regular time and realise how they
are built on ego, power and manipulation. This is radical but has the power to
transform darkness into light, death into life, despair into joy and
imprisonment into freedom. In this kingdom, the King is present all of the
time. His presence is accessible and his power available – resurrection power.
Let us pursue resurrection through death and make this kingdom and its King,
Jesus, visible to the people who have no other way of seeing other than
ourselves.

John 5:30 I can do
nothing by Myself; I judge only as I hear. And My judgment is just, because I
do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. John 6:38
For I have come down from heaven, not to
do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. John 8:28 So
Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know
that I am He, and that I do nothing on My own, but speak exactly what the
Father has taught Me. John 12:49 I
have not spoken on My own, but the Father who sent Me has commanded Me what to
say and how to say it. John 12:50
And I know that His command leads to eternal
life. So I speak exactly what the Father has told Me to say.” John 14:10 Do
you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I
say to you, I do not speak on My own. Instead, it is the Father dwelling in Me,
performing His works.

Featured

Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled. (Matthew 5:6)

Righteousness is one of the most
significant ideas in the Bible. As such it has been complicated through over-thinking
and under-pursuing. I am talking about theological speculation. I could fill
these lines with summaries and analyses of what everyone has written on the
subject, but that wouldn’t help me to recognise righteousness more clearly let
alone stir me to pursue it. One of the imbalances has come about from the very
worthy discussion about our relationship with God, commonly referred to as
salvation (justification, regeneration). I will always be thankful for the fact
that a German Augustinian priest named Martin Luther was scared witless during
a severe electrical storm in July 1509.[1]
It was the beginning of a long journey to discover how a person could be
assured of his salvation. That journey changed the shape of the church forever
when he read Paul’s quote from a prophecy of Habbakuk in the Letter to the
Romans: “the righteous shall live by their faith.”[2] Those of us whose Christian journey
has been shaped in part by the evangelical movement will be pressured to think
that all references to righteousness must be connected to the work of
Jesus that brings the opportunity for our salvation.

I want to urge us to see
righteousness in its broadest sense – inclusive of salvation but not restricted
to it. I think a basic understanding comes directly from the English word
itself. Righteousness exists when things are right, and unrighteousness, when things are wrong. For followers of Jesus,
right and wrong are defined by God – his nature, his purposes, his deeds and
his desires. In the Bible, I think righteousness and holiness are almost
interchangeable. My reading of the New Testament makes it hard for me to
distinguish between the two – especially in the practical sense. I can’t see
how someone can be righteous and unholy or holy but unrighteous. My
longstanding thesis that “Jesus is our hermeneutic” reminds me that he was
called “the righteous one.”[3] Jesus is
referred to constantly as the “Righteous one” through the preaching
of the apostles recorded in Acts.[4] John makes
it quite clear: My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not
sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ,
the Righteous One.[5]

So I need to ask a simple
question. Which day and which particular set of actions demonstrate Jesus as
being righteous. The answer can only be – all his actions every day. Not just
his actions but his desires, his thoughts, his feelings, his attitudes and his
relationships. He was the One who lived entirely as a righteous Son of God. And
this is my point. If I asked what it was that defined Jesus as being righteous,
what might the answer be? I think the righteousness modelled by Jesus is
“indiscriminate redemptive love.” It is the only definition that
covers all the different things that Jesus said, did and taught. Whenever I
hold attitudes or carry out actions other than those that display
indiscriminate redemptive love I am being unrighteous. When I tolerate or show
indifference to those things, I will not qualify for the blessing Jesus talked
about here in Matthew 5.

Jesus had a definite attitude to
the unrighteousness he witnessed, especially religious unrighteousness, and it
was not just anger and frustration. It was a hunger and a thirst for God’s
people to see the difference between sin and righteousness. It’s not only Satan
who dresses up as an angel of light. The sin he promotes in a thousand
different “respectable looking” forms will often be mistaken for
righteousness. Every day of the three years of Jesus’ ministry he WAS the
revelation of genuine righteousness, yet he was accused of being the devil and/or
being in league with the devil. He was criticised, challenged and finally
crucified by those who defined righteousness differently. Jesus’ life and
ministry exposed the true nature of their wickedness. If you read through any
chapter of the gospels, you will see Jesus hungering and thirsting after
righteousness. You will see him teaching about righteousness, imparting
righteousness and responding with redemptive love. This love was driven by his
desire to see sin defeated and righteousness imparted. It wasn’t just about external
behaviour, but the attitudes and desires of the heart. His hunger for
righteousness was the back story to what Hebrews says of him, “And let
us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus,
the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him, he endured the
cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not
grow weary and lose heart.” [6]

The compelling aspect of Jesus’
righteousness is the impact it had on others. It was because Jesus was
righteous that he loved unrighteous people. Similarly, it was the same
righteousness in Jesus that attracted unrighteous people to him. The Jesus kind
of righteousness repelled those who thought themselves to be the standard of
what is righteous. Jesus loved sinners and sinners loved Jesus and Jesus was
totally righteous. How sad that so much of our righteousness drives sinners
away from us and keeps us away from them. Whatever argument we might put up to
support either of those two things, we will find ourselves challenged by the
righteousness modelled by Jesus.

And the final thing to say about
righteousness is the fact that it defines the way we were designed to live by
our Creator. It is the life calling we are given by our Redeemer. This isn’t
some dreary duty roster that we have to commit to. Righteousness is beautiful
and desirable. It produces the deepest form of wholeness. It is the very
definition of genuine humanity. We hear a lot about humanity these days. There
is always a deep sense of what it means to value and honour humanity. Well, God
is the one who designed us, and he created us to live righteous lives and to
work for righteousness wherever we are and whatever sphere we belong to.

This attitude includes all of the
different aspects of life we experience. Abortion is unrighteous because it
generally focuses on the well-being of one person at the expense of another.
Sexual immorality is unrighteous because it steals from our own and other
people’s future for no other reason than self-indulgence. And so it continues.

Jesus tells us that the people of
the kingdom will never be able to dwell comfortably where unrighteousness is
wreaking its havoc. The corrupt world we live in needs people whose deep
driving desire will not be sated until things are put right and until people
begin to live according to what is right. As followers of Jesus, we are to lay
down our lives so that others will get to see righteousness and we will work
alongside them until righteousness exalts every nation on the earth.[7]

The whole atmosphere of Jesus’
words here is practical. The metaphor is pragmatic. What could be more concrete
than the idea of hunger and thirst? These are entirely universal and basic to
human existence. We are created in such a way that our bodies make sure we know
when we lack food or water. The feelings of hunger and thirst begin and don’t
go away until we eat food and drink water.

Other health problems do not make
their presence known as easily. I have had an issue with blood pressure for
many years. It is a hereditary trait in my family. So, I have to take one small
white tablet each day, and my blood pressure stays completely normal. The
problem is that if I forget to take the pill, I don’t feel any different. If I
don’t take them for a week, I still don’t feel any different. The only way I
can tell if my blood pressure is high is by using a machine. I can feel
perfectly fine, but the machine will tell me that my blood pressure is
dangerously high and at risk of a heart attack. So my self-awareness about this
issue is totally unreliable.

Hunger and thirst are not like
that. I will always remember the first time I tried to have a day of fasting
and prayer. I was still working on our family farm, so we started early and
then came in for breakfast. I didn’t come home but stayed working. When
lunchtime came, I was beginning to feel very hungry. This body had not been
without food for that length of time apart from a few bouts of sickness.
Bravely I pushed on into the afternoon. We were fencing at the time, and it was
reasonably hard work. By four o’clock I was almost dying with hunger. When I
had to drive back to the house to pick up some more supplies, I couldn’t help
myself. I screeched to a halt at the back gate, ran into the kitchen, opened
the fridge and saw a roasted chicken sitting there before me. I ripped one leg
off and then the other and wolfed them down. Then I made a sandwich with a bit
more and then returned to the work site. I can tell you that I felt a dismal
failure as a spiritual man, but I was no longer hungry. I was satisfied and
worked away without a single pang of hunger (except a few feelings of guilt
about failing God). Hunger is like that. The only thing that will stop the
urgent pangs is food.

So Jesus is talking about the
attitude kingdom people have to unrighteousness. A more common word for that is
“sin.” Just think about the attitudes of a lot of Christian people to
sin. Some don’t seem to care. Others choose a selection of sins and make sure
everyone who commits one of the sins on that list is judged and condemned.
Neither of those attitudes belonged to the ministry of Jesus. His attitude to
sin was to do whatever was possible to enable the sinner to be aware of their
sin and choose to become righteous. For that reason, he was criticised. His
accusers said things like this: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and
sinners.’ ”[8] The truth is, if you hunger and thirst for
righteousness, you have to be where sinners are. Jesus was as committed among
the non-religious sinners as we was to the religious ones. He ate with Matthews
friends[9] as well as
at the home of a prominent Pharisee [10]
for precisely the same reason. He wanted his hunger and thirst for
righteousness to be assuaged.

[1] On July 2, 1509, Martin Luther was returning to University and was
caught in a violent electrical storm. He feared so much that he cried out to
St. Anne. He promised her that if he was delivered from the storm, he would
become a monk. It was the beginning of his journey, first as a priest. In
October of 1517, he posted his 95 Theses on the door of the church at
Wittenberg marking the beginning of the Reformation.

Here is the second distinctive
kingdom attitude. It is supposed to make its presence felt when a situation
arises that warrants sadness and grief. That happens a lot in our world as it
did in the world of Jesus. It was pronounced enough to get a special prophetic
mention. Isaiah talked about the coming Messiah, more than seven hundred years
before it happened. His repeated statements caused considerable problems for
the religious leaders of Israel at the time and later because they referred to
the fact that the Messiah would experience great suffering.[1]
Here is a sample: “….. a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”
(Isaiah 53:3) All of us know something
about personal loss. I am aware that our culture preconditions us to think
about most things from an individual point of view, but I don’t think we should
be ready to limit our understanding to that assumption.

When I read what others have
written on this matter, I am surprised to find that they mainly talk about the
sufferings associated with Jesus trial and crucifixion. There is no surprise
about this. I have no idea at all as to the measure of that suffering. At the
same time, as I have hinted above, I am not sure that Jesus was referring to
that in his call to us to become people moved only by personal sadness. My
appeal is, again, to the record of Jesus life and ministry. I ask the question
of the stories in the gospels as to whether the experience of the cross was the
main thing Jesus was grieved about. And I am sure you would come to the same
conclusion as I. The answer is that Jesus was grieved on many different
circumstances. So, to understand how this “attitude” works inside of
us, we need to look at the record of Jesus’ grieving.

1. Jesus grieved over
human lostness. Jesus
walked throughout the region with the joyful message of God’s kingdom realm. He
taught in their meeting houses, and wherever he went, he demonstrated God’s
power by healing every kind of disease and illness. When he saw the vast crowds
of people, Jesus’ heart was deeply moved with compassion, because they seemed
weary and helpless, like wandering sheep without a shepherd. ” (Matthew
9:35-38) We have to pause a moment
to read this story lest we miss the information that is telling us about
something that kept on happening all the time. I’ve been a pastor for nearly
fifty years and have been in the presence of people with all kinds of needs.
Many times, those circumstances evoked a very natural sense of sadness and
grief for what had happened. There have also been times when my job required me
to get up and go out in all kinds of circumstances when I would have preferred
not to, so I went and did my “duty.” Other times I have given my
heart and soul to some situation only to find that people were using me for
their own destructive self-gratification. This story tells me that Jesus went
to a lot of places around the province of Galilee and every time he saw a crowd
of people, his compassion was stirred by their sense of lostness and
helplessness. They were like sheep without a shepherd, weary and helpless. And
he gave them the very best of heaven’s compassion. It had nothing to do with
how tired or depleted he might have felt. The voice of lostness called out to
his heart, and his heart responded with deep and unending compassion.

We need to have an honest think
about this. It seems to me that most Christians I know in my nation of
Australia don’t have much of a feeling for lostness at all. They can quite
successfully pursue their careers, raise their families, go on vacation and the
like without feeling what is around them every day the way Jesus felt. We have
often gone one better and hurled judgements at lost people. Every time Jesus
witnessed human lostness it filled his heart with sadness, and from that
sadness he responded to them.

2. Human heaviness and
depression.28 “Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Then
come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. 29 Simply join your
life with mine. Learn my ways, and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble,
easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me. 30 For all that I
require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear.” (Matthew 11:25-30)
Jesus made the experience of his Father’s love accessible to all. The religious
system and its protectors shut people away from God through a ruthless system
of demands. They portrayed God as distant, aloof and/or repulsed by sin. The
only tangible connection with God was likely to be his disapproval and disgust.
There have been times when the church has been obsessed with the same ideas. If
you read the famous sermon by Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the hands of an
angry God,” you will undoubtedly be persuaded to think that way. It was
especially so for the multitudes of very poor people whose poverty, though
often contributed to by the authorities and their taxes, was construed as the
judgement of God on their sin. The reference above stands in its own judgment
on such an attitude. Instead of shame, blame, guilt and punishment, Jesus was
calling on those who were weary with the complex burdens of life to come to him
and experience rest. Notice he didn’t give them a ten point plan of how to deal
with stress. His solution was for them to draw close to him so that they could
experience rest.

In our own day, we are still
plagued with the weights and burdens of the day, and it seems so common for
people to be crushed by them. How sad, that a society like ours that seems to
offer so many ways to be happy is exposed by a seemingly endless line of
depressed people. Often, they are led to that horrible place where the only
source of release seems to be to take their own lives. Jesus didn’t offer
advice on how to avoid depression. He didn’t point out all of the things they
might have done to avoid getting in such a state. He offered himself and his
presence, his love and compassion as the answer. And he invited them to journey
with him, be yoked to him so that they could learn from walking that journey
WITH him. His willingness to open the door to people loaded up with cares meant
that he would be carrying their load until there was no more load to carry. And
he was going to do it without making them feel obligated and guilty for doing
it.

Paul shares a similar sentiment
while writing to the church in Thessalonica: “With a mother’s love and
affectionate attachment to you, we were very happy to share with you not only
the gospel of God but also our lives—because you had become so dear to us.”[2]All
of this is the outworking of what Isaiah was shown about the ministry of the
promised Messiah-King: For sure He took on Himself our troubles and carried
our sorrows. Yet we thought of Him as being punished and hurt by God, and made
to suffer. 5 But He was hurt for our wrong-doing. He was crushed for our sins.
He was punished so we would have peace. He was beaten so we would be healed
(Isaiah 53:4,5) The beautiful
attitude modelled by Jesus with regard to human load-bearing is to invite them
to unload and find rest. He is moved by the weight and touched by the
tiredness. If we are willing to come to him, we will not only NOT be pushed
away, as we so often find in our own community, but we see someone willing to
relieve the burden and carry the load.

One of my character flaws relates
to my ability to put down my keys and then forget where they are. When all my
children were growing up, it was a legendary proneness. So when I shouted out
in a house full of wonderful fellow humans asking if anyone had seen my keys
(and I was always rushing to get somewhere), I would be met with grunts and
comments lacking in any form of compassion. And it was even harder to raise a
search party. Everyone was too busy asking me where I had left them. Everyone
knew exactly who to blame. And they were right. This story of human load
bearing is not complete without referring to a particular occasion. When I had
looked everywhere without success, I didn’t know what to do – so as a last
resort I cried out with a loud voice to Jesus. I acknowledged that he knew
exactly where the keys were and would he tell me so I could get on with my
‘important’ job of serving him. Immediately, into my mind came the words,
“They are in the garbage tin.” I searched the household bin with no
joy. I went to the bin outside but nothing. Then I went over to my office and
in the little paper bin by my desk were the said keys. Voila! As I said, Jesus’
offer is for us to come to him so that he can give us rest – and this rest is
available not only to the spiritual giants who never lose their keys, but to
those of us babes who seem to make it a habit. And the postscript to the story
is a habit I have now developed of always putting my keys in the same place at
home, and at the office. Not a problem.

3. Sicknesses:13
On hearing this, Jesus slipped away privately by boat to be alone. But when the
crowds discovered he had sailed away, they emerged from all the nearby towns
and followed him on foot. 14 So when Jesus landed, he had a huge crowd waiting
for him. Seeing so many people, his heart was deeply moved with compassion
toward them, so he healed all the sick who were in the crowd. (Matthew
14:13,14) Have you ever spent an
extended period in a hospital, perhaps in the emergency department? Human sickness
creates a huge burden. From a personal point of view, it can dominate the life
of an individual along with the members of their family. A large city hospital
represents a concentration of sadness and suffering that cannot be measured. On
the occasion recorded here Jesus had decided it was time to get away from the
crowds and their needs. He sailed across the lake with his disciples. When they
saw what was happening, the crowds simply followed around the edge of the lake.
Perhaps the wind wasn’t very strong that day so while Jesus had a slow boat
ride the crowd was gathering at the place he was about to land. They were
waiting for him. That very statement doesn’t fill me with much excitement. I
can imagine the disciples being moved, not by compassion but by anything from
frustration to anger. Today we would go into some room, close the door and turn
off our mobile. It wasn’t so easy in those days.

Regardless of how inconsiderate
it might have been and even though Jesus was worn out from the previous ministry
demands, something characteristically beautiful surfaced: an attitude of deep
compassion. He was moved more by what he saw in them than he was by his own
needs and emotions. Now there’s a challenge for people like us who measure out
our availability based on convenience and personal preference. A challenge for
those whose doors close at 5:00 and whose phones go to message bank; for those
whose sense of responsibility is governed by some set of workplace agreements;
for those who never answer their phones and don’t often respond to messages.
Jesus felt deep compassion, and that compassion didn’t run dry until the last
sick person was healed. What they felt from Jesus was not just the opportunity
to be well, but the opportunity to be in the zone where they felt the
compassion of heaven rather than the often indifference of this world. While
grubby human selfishness makes it hard to connect with them, divine compassion
is always accessible and welcoming.

The attitude Jesus was referring
to regarding human sickness was not the sorrow of the sick persons themselves,
but the compassion for those who are sick within the ones who are well. The
blessing is not that Jesus heals sickness, but that the kingdom of God should
be made up of people who are not able to live around sick people without moving
to relieve their burden because of spontaneous and consistent compassion.
Comfort happens because they find the presence of Jesus there.

4. The death of a family
member or close friend:When Mary finally found Jesus outside the
village, she fell at his feet in tears and said, “Lord, if only you had
been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus looked at Mary and
saw her weeping at his feet, and all her friends who were with her grieving, he
shuddered with emotion and was deeply moved with tenderness and compassion. He
said to them, “Where did you bury him?” “Lord, come with us, and
we’ll show you,” they replied. Then tears streamed down Jesus’ face. (John
11:32-35) There is a lot about this
story that is unusual. Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick, but didn’t leave
immediately. When he was told that Lazarus had died, he said he was sleeping.
When he came near to Bethany, he waited outside the town rather than going to
the home of Mary and Martha even though they were grieving. He was deeply moved
with compassion, having seen Mary’s sadness. When they took him to where
Lazarus was buried, and he saw the people filled with grief he began to weep
also, even though he knew that Lazarus was about the be raised from the dead.
Instead of getting obsessed about finding the answers to those questions I
would instead allow the information to tell me something about Jesus and the
personal life of someone who is proclaiming and advancing the kingdom of God.

It is typical of western culture
to see that Jesus was overcome by emotion, even though he had already told the
disciples that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. The fact is that
Jesus’ display of emotion and the outcome of the incident are two very
different issues. More to the point, it shows the way “Blessed are those
who mourn, for they shall be comforted” works in practice. Regardless of
the large story going on, people are grieving for their lost brother and
friend. That’s what Jesus connected with. It shows empathy, not analysis. The
empathy for Jesus was immediate. Being surrounded by people experiencing the
pain and loss brought about by death was something that belonged to the very
core of his personhood and mission. He had come to destroy the power of death.
Like Paul would say a bit later, “Death, where is your sting, grave
where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the
law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:55,56) So Jesus looked at the sorrow and
was immediately and deeply moved to tears.

We often lock away our feelings,
especially those of us on the male side of the gender line. God isn’t locked
up. We know that by what we witness here. Jesus wasn’t feeling sadness for
himself; He was feeling the grief of those around him. This identification is
another example of “blessed are those who mourn.” Kingdom people will
have an attitude about the sufferings of others. They will readily and fully
identify with those feeling. On that basis, they will not only share in the
circumstances of others, but bring the very presence of the King of the kingdom
of God. Jesus knew the big story and the big picture. It never prevented him
from registering and sharing in the feelings of the smallest story – in this
case, a small group of Lazarus’ friends gathered around his tomb in mourning.
What Jesus does, God is doing. As Jesus wept with the mourners, he was making
the unseen heart of the Creator and Father God known. That is amazing. We are
the people of God when the sadness and grief of others genuinely moves us. I am
not talking about sending a sympathy card or writing some nice words in it. I
am talking about something that comes from inside your heart and meets or
resonates with their hearts.

Kingdom people have attitude
about the sadness and suffering of others. We are deeply touched by it.

5. The stubborn
resistance of the people of God 34 O city of Jerusalem, you are the city
that murders your prophets! You are the city that pelts to death with stones
the very messengers who were sent to deliver you! So many times I have longed
to gather your wayward children together around me, as a hen gathers her chicks
under her wings—but you were too stubborn to let me. 35 And now it is too late
since your house will be left in ruins. You will not see me again until you can
say, ‘We welcome the one who comes to us in the name of the Lord.'” (Luke
13:31-35)

41 When Jesus caught sight of
the city, he burst into tears with uncontrollable weeping over Jerusalem, 42
saying, “If only you could recognise that this day peace is within your reach!
But you cannot see it. 43 For the day is soon coming when your enemies will
surround you, pressing you in on every side, and laying siege to you. 44 They
will crush you to pieces, and your children too! And when they leave, your city
will be totally destroyed. Since you would not recognise God’s day of
visitation, your day of devastation is coming!” (Luke 19;41-44)

There are a variety of reasons
for experiencing grief. We have no trouble relating to the previous example
outside the tomb of Lazarus. Here is a very different set of circumstances.
Luke records these two occasions. There were at least two occasions where God
mourns the stubbornness of the people he has called to proclaim his nature and
purpose to the families of the earth. If you were to read the whole of the Old
Testament in a couple of sittings, it would take you a bit more than 52 hours.
But if you did that you would notice how prone these people were to forsake
their special relationship with God and how they were so easily compromised by
turning to worship idols and adopt the values of the nations around them. Then
read the gospels. Jesus, the awaited Messiah, comes. Tellingly, John writes these
words to describe what happened, “He was in the world, and the world was
made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his
own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in
his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of
blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John
1:11-13). Jesus came to people who should have been the ones most likely
to recognise him but was rejected by them. I don’t know whether anyone has ever
rejected you? Worse still, to be rejected by a whole group of people, or worse,
rejected by your own people – but Jesus was. In human experience, it is the
stuff that breeds resentment, bitterness, separation and retribution. With
Jesus, it was tears of sadness. Please read the two passages at the beginning
of this section and soak up the environment created by Jesus attitude. No
slighted anger. No abuse. No threats. Just sadness at what they were doing and
the consequences they would experience.

There is a particular poignancy
about the second of the two statements. In the narrative, it comes as he
finished entering Jerusalem on a donkey. He saw the sad prophetic act of
triumph as they waved palm branches and then burst into tears at what was about
to ensue. Even the atmosphere of victory could not cover the deep feeling of
remorse. In a week these people would be part of a different crowd with very
different intentions. In his book, “Postcards from Babylon,” Brian
Zahn has made the profound observation that it is likely that two different
kings were entering Jerusalem at about the same time. From the west came
Pontius Pilate, representing the Lord Caesar. His credentials of office were
displayed by his armed soldiers marching before and after his chariot and
showing off the might of Roman oppression. On the other side of the city, a
rabbi from Galilee entered on the colt of a donkey. His feet were likely
dragging on the ground. A very different King representing a very different
kingdom. As he entered, I think Pilate might have looked at the gathering
crowds of pilgrims and strengthened his resolve to keep the Jews under control
until the Passover was finished. Jesus looked at the same city and burst into
tears. They were from different worlds and saw different things as they
entered.

My point is to note the attitude.
Jesus was filled with grief, not for himself but for the people who thought
they represented God but were as lost from him as the older brother in the
story of the prodigal son.[3] When we
become sons and daughters of the kingdom what is going to be released in us is
the same attitudes to rank stubbornness and arrogance. Not the passions
associated with personal hurt but the flow of sadness for the people who remain
in peril. Within forty years the city would be sacked, the temple destroyed and
the people massacred. I want to feel the same way toward the people who resist
and reject my message and ministry. I want to make tangible to them the way God
feels. It’s funny how we, as followers of Jesus can be compassionate toward
people with no commitment to Christ but show hatred to those people who follow
Jesus but disagree with us. Here is a ‘heads up’ on how God feels toward them.

6. The unbelief of Jesus’
disciplesJesus said, “You faithless and corrupt people! How
long must I be with you and put up with you?” (Luke 9:41)

This statement may well mark the
deepest expression of sadness and frustration from Jesus apart from the events
leading up to and including the cross. Jesus had just come back from the Mount
of Transfiguration with Peter, James and John. They found the remaining
disciples surrounded by a crowd of people and a demonised boy. The disciples
had unsuccessfully tried to cast out a demon and were engaged in a verbal
altercation with some religious leaders. When the boy’s father told Jesus, he
responded with an expression of deep grief. There is an obvious question
needing to be asked here. Was Jesus upset at the disciples or the generation of
people who had collectively contributed to the chronic level of unbelief? A
literal translation of the text would be as follows, “O generation (of)
unbelieving and perverted (people). Until when will I be with you and bear with
you.” My own conclusion is that he was referring to both. It was the
disciples who couldn’t cast out the demon, so we can only assume that they were
the ones directly implicated. It is very easy to understand that their level of
faith was connected to the collective views of their ‘generation.’ The shallow
demonised religious system that weighed people down with obligation and locked
them away from knowing God had played its part. Compromises with both
Hellenistic and Roman pressure and influence had also played a role. The
outcome was displayed in the fact that the disciples he said and done
everything they knew how to do, but the demon remained. The gospel record will
show that they had had previous experience at casting out demons before. This
demon was able to resist their efforts. More correctly, they were not able to
operate at a level of authority needed to give the maleficent presence its
marching orders. When they ask Jesus about it later, he explains that the only
way for them to gain that level of authority is through prayer (and perhaps prayer
with fasting). In other words, a change is needed in the relationship between
God and the disciples for them to exercise the full measure of his power.

I guess some people will assume
that Jesus is merely expressing disappointment and/or anger at the remiss of
the disciples. They should have been able to cast out the demon. No teacher or
parent will scold a pupil or child if they have been asked to do something that
is impossible. Would I ask my ten-year-old son to jump over a two-metre wall
and then berate him as he is lying on the ground after a failed attempt? I
would be cross with the same son if I asked him to pick up his clothes from the
floor of his bedroom and found that he was still playing on his Xbox. In the
latter case, the problem was nothing to do with ability but will. The same must
be true for the disciples. Their lack of faith must have related to their lack
of commitment rather than ability.

This is not the place to become
embroiled in the broader issues of living a life of faith in Jesus. On one
occasion some people came and asked Jesus what they should do to do the works
of God. Jesus said their most significant and most important task was to
believe on the one God had sent (i.e. Jesus himself).[4]
I am convinced that faith is not just some kind of temporary mental posture or
less still, an affirming emotion. At the same time, it is a measurable state.
Jesus talks about little faith and great faith in precisely that way. As here,
he also talks about unbelief as a measurable human condition. The famous words
from Hebrews 11 tell us that faith is the “substance” of things hoped
for and the “evidence” of things that are not seen. So, faith is a
level of conviction about something we can’t see. We see it as reality, even though
it has not yet happened. This phenomenon is everywhere in the Bible from the
beginning to the end. We are also told that “without faith, it is
impossible to please God.”[5] On this
occasion, recorded by Luke, the disciples were able to exercise faith but had
allowed the “unbelief” of their generation to override the trust they
should have had in what Jesus had modelled for them and taught them. I think
that makes sense, both for them as well as for us. We also live amid a
generation that has worked hard to convince itself of its own independence and
self-reliance.

It would be wrong for us to
assume that “unbelief” should be thought of as an empty space or a
vacuum created by the lack of faith. The word for unbelief is
“apistos” (and the word for faith is “pistos”). The prefix
works like our English prefix “anti-.” It is an active state, not a
passive one. A contemporary idea would be a phrase used to describe people who
oppose the idea of climate change. They are called,
“climate-deniers.” That term more correctly carries the idea of
“unbelief.” A person manifesting “unbelief” is a
“belief-denier.” They are actively opposed to the idea of faith in
(or faithfulness to) God. They have chosen an alternative belief system, one
which they are actively pursuing.

To get back to the point of all
this, we learn from this incident in the Gospel of Luke that when Jesus own
disciples choose an alternative belief system than the one that Jesus was
showing and teaching them, the response from Jesus is deep grief -, not anger
or resentment.

When Jesus teaches about the
second of nine attitudes that will be trademarks of the citizens of the new
kingdom, one such expression of grief will be toward unbelief – our own or
other people’s. The grief is understandable when you think that the Creator,
Father, Redeemer, Provider, Purposer has made known to us the way we are to
live as sons and daughters of God – and we take the capacity we have to respond
to that love by rejecting it and trusting in a humanly contrived system, such a
rejection is met with an outpouring of grief. That such a thing should happen?
The reward for those who share this sadness is going to be blessed. Notice that
we are not told we will see everyone we care about putting their trust in God.
What we will experience will be the comfort of that very God who feels
precisely the same as we do only more so. This grief doesn’t cause Jesus to
give up or turn aside. He doesn’t pick up his ball and go home. He challenges
that unbelief by continuing to fulfil his Father’s purpose. He continues to
model and teach how to exercise faith. Such comfort is precisely the blessing
we need. God intended deliverance for this demonised boy. As soon as the demon
in the boy realised Jesus was present the boy was thrown into a convulsion.
When Jesus drove out the demon the process demonstrated the effects of the
struggle. When he told the demon to go, the boy fell on the ground as if he was
dead.[6] Then, the
boy revived and was totally set free. When the disciples settled for something
less than what God intended, Jesus called it “unbelief.” That is
hugely sobering for all of us who trust what is written for us in Scripture.
Then they started arguing with the religious leaders. Now, there is a definite
example of unbelief. They should have grieved as Jesus did. So should we. When
they were told what do to get from a place of unbelief to a place of faith –
i.e. prayer (or prayer with fasting), we should heed the same advice.

So all of these are examples from
the life of Jesus where he was giving expression to this attitude. We need to
check out our own hearts. We need to measure how we are doing soberly.
Otherwise, we will do what most people do who don’t know God or his attitudes.
We will grieve for ourselves and a small group of family or friends and
conveniently close our hearts toward the needs of people we meet every day in
every place. Let us pursue God until this compassion is fully released from
deep inside us so that we make God known in this compelling way.

[1] These are called the “Servant Songs.” They are also referred to as the
songs of a “Suffering Servant.” They are found in Isaiah 42, 49, 50 and 52,53.

” Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” (Matt. 5:2)

“Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)[1]

What was Jesus talking about when he used the phrase, “poor in spirit?” Poverty usually refers to a lack of material wealth. I come from the richest city in one of the richest countries in the world. Our images of poverty usually come through our television screens. It breaks your heart to see families, especially children, in abject poverty. Around the world, one child dies from starvation every five seconds. That means if I count to ten all of our four children have died, and in another twenty seconds, our eight grandchildren have also died. That reality is mind-numbing as well as heart-wrenching. The majority would be watched or held as they died. Many families spend all of their waking hours and all their effort to keep their families alive. For those families, no matter how hard they work, there is nothing they can do to break the cycle of poverty. But all of this is largely academic for people like us. By contrast, I have not lived a single day of my life without access to food. I don’t know what it is live in poverty and have no internal reference for it. I am assuming most of the people who will read these words will be the same.

The Bible has a lot to say about people who are poor. Jesus clearly stated that he had come to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah[2]. His stated goal was to proclaim good news to poor people. There he describes three types of poverty: people who were in some form of imprisonment, people who suffered from sickness and those who were being oppressed. The gospels are the record of him accomplishing that goal. I want to be a follower of Jesus. From my own study of the Scriptures, I have formed a definition of what it means to be “poor.” A person is poor when they lack any of the basic things that are needed to embrace God’s purpose for their lives – not just money or food, but all of the other things – freedom, justice, self-worth, love, community, vocation, meaning. People whose circumstances and decisions have locked them away from these things should be included among the poor as well. I think someone should be considered to be poor when, regardless of what effort they make or how clever they are, they are not able to bring about change. By that definition, there are very many “poor” people in countries like Australia. And a lot of them live in big houses and drive expensive cars. The sad reality is that very often, our culture will regard them as wealthy and not poor. All the time the spiritual and social fabric of our society will not see the poverty of their personal world.

The only reason I say this is to make the point that when Jesus talks to us about being “poor” in something, we will have difficulty relating to that idea just because we only have our imagination to draw on to figure out what “poor” might be like. Jesus’ reference to poverty is being used in a semi-metaphoric sense. He is asking us to see something about ourselves and understand that we ARE literally poor, but he is also asking us to look at how poor people think and react. What happens when those who are food poor see a truck filled with food entering the camp. They don’t think about being proud or ashamed. They know there is food there and they need to get enough for their family and themselves. They would wait in line and not complain just because there is food they can access. They won’t be sleeping in their beds or listening to music through their earphones. They will be doing whatever it takes to get food. When people are food poor, it is the first and last thing they think about every day of their lives.

In this teaching, Jesus is telling us that there is a kind of poverty shared by every human person that we are not going to recognise easily. Jesus calls it “spirit poverty,” or spiritual poverty. This is a strange idea simply because every other form of poverty is almost impossible to avoid when it exists. Those people who have worked with aid agencies come back from Africa or other countries and often needing counselling to deal with the impact of death and suffering they have experienced. And they themselves were guaranteed food and clothing and everything else they needed. But spiritual poverty is different. It can exist everywhere but not be felt or recognised. Wow!! That is weird for sure.

Think about it. We are created by God. We are the only species on earth created in the image of God. We are designed to live as sons and daughters in the family of God. Even so, it is possible for us to live our whole lives without a relationship to God or reference to God. We can live on God’s earth, breath God’s air, sustained by God’s grace and yet have no awareness of any kind of need to be connected to God let alone worship and serve him. The story of the Old Testament people of God is a story of God making himself known in gracious amazing ways. This God establishes a connection with these people called a covenant. He commits to dwell among them with the intention that all the peoples of all nations will be able to see their “spirit poverty” and be guided to a restoration of this relationship and a life of spirit wealth. Instead, they choose to worship the idols and adopt the culture of the people groups around them and lose the distinctiveness of that very spirit wealth. Instead of attracting people to God they become religiously arrogant and cause God’s name to be dishonoured.[3]

The life and ministry of Jesus Christ gave all of us an opportunity to see how the relationship between God and his people was meant to work. We know from the famous piece of poetry recorded in Paul’s letter to the Philippians[4] Jesus set aside his divine status but not his relationship with the Father. So, when we look at the way Jesus lived, we can see what it means to live “spirit poor.” The key information on this comes in a number of references from the Gospel of John.[5] At least six times, Jesus specifically reveals something to his observers that they cannot see but is nonetheless real. What they can’t see is that He takes no initiative of his own. Everything he says and does is sourced from his relationship with his Father. He even goes as far as saying, “He tells me what to say and how to say it.”[6]These words are a bit of a mystery to those of us whose personhood has been so profoundly wired to the ideas of independence and self-reliance handed down through our culture. We default to them without missing a heartbeat. It is made harder because of the way our relationship with God has been culturally domesticated over the years. You only have to compare what happens in revival times and then compare it to non-revival times. We seem to be able to revert to something controlled and built on external behaviour rather than heart relationship. Jesus reminded the disciples about this just before he left them: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” [7] If ‘with’ means what ‘with’ usually means and if ‘always’ means what always usually means, then we are talking about a reality that doesn’t stop when the worship team get off the stage, or the prayer meeting finishes up. Jesus lived this way privately for thirty years and then demonstrated how it worked throughout his three-year public ministry.

One of the features of the renewal movement centred on the Toronto Airport Vineyard has been a re-discovery of the “presence” of God. Despite some criticisms of certain unusual behaviours[8], people began to talk about God “showing up” in a meeting. It was explained by comparing two theological words: omnipresence is the belief that God is present everywhere all the time, but that presence may not be identifiable in any tangible way. The Toronto contribution has pointed to the “manifest presence” of God. This means that the God who is always omnipresent made his presence known in some tangible way – able to be experienced by at least some people and able to be observed by others. This is indeed a pattern that is consistent with the Old Testament experience. God spoke at certain times to certain people. He also intercepted normative human experience and did supernatural things (burning bush, plagues, sea pushed back, walls falling down and the like, rescuing from fire, stopping lions from eating people etc. The Toronto renewal re-awakened people to the fact that God desired to make his presence known. It was a soft but strong rebuke to a church that had become all-too-preoccupied with words spoken about God rather than the experience of a relationship with God.

And the question from me is whether that phenomenon is still too much a replication of the Old Covenant rather than the New Covenant. That question will only be answered if we ask whether it was consistent with the relationship modelled and described by Jesus. Here is the problem. Did Jesus have a constant awareness of the presence of God or was the presence of God only manifest through the signs and wonders he performed – or in the times he spent in prayer? If we are going to take seriously what we know from the six references in John’s gospel, there could be little doubt unless the words are going to be considered as metaphorical and not literal. Here they are again. You be the judge:

“Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19)

I can do nothing by Myself; I judge only as I hear. And My judgment is just because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (John 5:30)

For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. (John 6:38)

So, Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on My own, but speak exactly what the Father has taught Me. (John 8:28)

I have not spoken on My own, but the Father who sent Me has commanded Me what to say and how to say it. (John 12:49)

And I know that His command leads to eternal life. So, I speak exactly what the Father has told Me to say.” (John 12:50)

If we are to take these statements on face value, we must assume that Jesus had an awareness of his Father’s presence, if not all the time, then often. I would say the more likely option would be the former given the information provided in these verses. This experience was not at all vague. When Jesus spoke about how that relationship worked, we have to conclude that when Jesus found himself in a given situation, he was able to “see” what his Father was doing. From that relationship, he was able to “hear” his Father’s assessment. He was told what to say and how to say it. That represents a relationship of significant bandwidth. Of course, we are going to ask the question as to HOW Jesus gained this awareness and experienced this level of intimacy with a Person who could not be seen OR whose presence could directly be verified. What was confirmed was the fact that Jesus knew what people were thinking (word of knowledge, [9])? He was able to perform healings, deliverances and miraculous provision. He was able to make storms cease and walk on top of the water. Later the apostles would testify that these were, in fact, the signs that God was WITH HIM.[10]

What does all this have to do with “spirit poor” you might ask? To me, the very nature of Jesus modus operandi on earth is a living testimony of this very phenomenon. Jesus lived his life on the earth as a model son of God. He lived the way every other son and daughter were designed to live. He is the second Adam, and the relationship with God has been restored. As from the very beginning we were designed to live in fellowship with the Father (and the Son[11]). Adam and Eve forsook that relationship. Jesus not only restored that relationship but took it to a whole new level. Jesus describes this by using a very extreme metaphor. He says we must become so dependent on God that it should be like the way a vine branch is connected with the trunk of the vine.[12] Our goal must be like his – to do nothing separately from him. To take no initiative just because we have a good idea or a well-reasoned opinion. He speaks further about this relationship by using the phrase, “Just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us”[13].

This little phrase: “poor in spirit” encapsulates just that. In terms of spiritual things, we must regard ourselves to be as spirit poor as South Sudanese people in the camps are food poor. As they are aware that they have nothing and need to find food for themselves and their families. Every time the UN food trucks show up, they rush to get what they need. In the same way, we must look to foster this relationship with God so that our only spiritual resource comes from Him. We must reject the lie of our culture that will want to tell us that we are clever enough and capable enough to live each day by our own efforts and skills. Remember Jesus said, “Without me, you can do nothing.”[14]The moment we think we can go it alone we should feel the pangs of our hunger for God. Even the Psalms can express what this feels like: “How lovely are your dwelling places, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.[15]The imagery is according to the understanding of the day. God’s presence on earth was located only in the temple in Jerusalem. We know from the New Testament that Jesus invented a new temple. I am that temple, and we are that temple. God dwells in us and is with us. When we are poor in spirit, it is because we are convinced that this relationship is urgent and essential for all of us all the time. We should regard living without being totally dependent on God as impoverishment. We should look to our dependence on God as singularly essential. We need to learn to live our lives in this way and learn from Jesus how to do precisely that.

Jesus tells us that when we offer no self-created alternative to depending fully on our relationship with God, we experience the kingdom of God. Little wonder. When we take no initiative of our own, when we offer no substitute of our own and when we depend on God for all of it his rule comes to all of our lives all of the time. This is a life challenge that we must not avoid. When the world wants to tell us how clever and how capable we are, we need to set aside those lies. We need to adopt the attitude of a spiritual pauper deliberately and that we will never BE anything or be able to DO anything worthy of our calling as sons and daughters unless it comes directly from Him.

This first distinctive attitude of kingdom people is the attitude of total dependence on God. To be disconnected from God’s presence, his wisdom, his intentions and his ways is to be considered akin to abject poverty – a poverty of the soul. Since our culture has taught us to be self-centred, self-preserving and self-determined, we need to adopt this attitude and learn to live as Jesus did, not wanting anything that does not begin with God and end in his fulfilled purpose.

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

We need to do an audit. How much of what we do reflects something that has come from God? Where are the areas that lack the signs of the kingdom rule of God?

We need to begin to coach ourselves to “see what the Father” is doing in a given situation and then discover how we can serve that purpose.

We need to ask God what to say and how to say things so that we reflect his nature and will in a given situation.

We need to start in the place of prayer but extend out from there to all of the familiar places where we live our lives.

We need to deliberately and directly relate to God during our daily living – asking him things and seeing if there are things, we can know from him that will enable us to link up with his purpose.

We need to guard our lives in the areas of our human capability and ask if we are living by our own cleverness and ability OR living by the grace and power that comes from heaven.

[1] See also John 5:30 I can do nothing by Myself; I judge only as I hear. And My judgment is just because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. John 6:38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. John 8:28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on My own, but speak exactly what the Father has taught Me. John 12:49 I have not spoken on My own, but the Father who sent Me has commanded Me what to say and how to say it. John 12:50 And I know that His command leads to eternal life. So I speak exactly what the Father has told me to say.”

[3] See Romans 2: “As it is written: ‘God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’ ” Paul is referring to Isaiah 52:5 or perhaps, Ezekiel 36:20,22

[4] See Philippians 2:6-11 Who, being in very nature God,did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;rather, he made himself nothingby taking the very nature of a servant,being made in human likeness.And being found in appearance as a man,he humbled himselfby becoming obedient to death —even death on a cross!Therefore, God exalted him to the highest placeand gave him the name that is above every name,that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.

[5] See the quote at the top of this article and the references in the footnotes

[8] things like uncontrolled laughter, rolling around on the floor, falling to the ground under the power of the Spirit of God, barking like a dog etc. have been reported by participants and witnesses of the meetings.

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea,40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice, she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her!”

46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” 56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

BATTLE LINES

As we survey the gospel stories to find out how battles are to be fought, it is crucial to notice incidents like this one. If I was going to categorise this story of Mary visiting Elizabeth, it presents us with an opportunity to see such a fulness of grace from heaven happening that the enemy has minimal or no chance to intervene. I am sure there are many of these occasions. I remember Suzette Hattingh talking about the impact of a Reinhard Bonnke crusade in Africa. She said that the focus of prayer and the faith of a united church coupled with the presentation of the gospel saw amazing miracles happening and tangible transformation. One of the challenges they observed was to see the impact wane after a period of time. She said it was as if the resident demons all left town for a while, but then found ways of returning. Jesus taught about this in a straightforward way when he talked about demons being cast out and then returning with a bunch of mates to make the latter situation worse than the former.[1]

That would not be the case concerning Mary visiting Elizabeth. She went because the angel had told her that Elizabeth was pregnant. When two people who have experienced such a wonderful measure of grace from heaven get together, divine sparks are bound to fly. The little six month formed baby leapt in Elizabeth’s womb. On could hardly imagine a more powerful prophetic act. John the Baptist’s whole purpose was pointing people to Jesus. His life’s work was to bear witness to him – even before he was born. Such was the abundance of Holy Spirit presence.

Then what was inside of Elizabeth overflowed as she made a prophetic declaration, testifying that the baby Mary would bear was the Messiah, whom she called her Lord. Humbled by what was happening in her presence, she honoured Mary for her trust in what the angel had said. This led to further flow of revelation.

The overflow of prophetic utterance is both exciting and instructive. I think it represents important universal principles about the working of the Spirit in our lives. If you read it slowly and think about what Elizabeth is saying we realise that the Holy Spirit is taking what she is experiencing (her story) and putting it in the context of the big story. God has poured out divine favour on her, even though in the status stakes she doesn’t finish anywhere near the top of the bill. She now realises that God is not just giving her and Zechariah a wonderful baby boy and removing their shame (the disgrace for her was much greater since guilt was more readily placed on the woman than the man). Her boy will herald the coming of the Messiah. Then she realises that what is going on will be told and retold for that reason.

In the second part, she declares the difference between the ways of God and the ways of earthly kingdoms. God has typically bypassed all of the people who may represent likely candidates by the values of the kingdom of this world, especially all of those who may presume to be shortlisted for a divinely appointed task. He has taken two unknown women from way down the pecking order and has drawn them into his divine purpose. The choosing of unlikely candidates is a consistent theme in Scripture. The danger for us is to get one part of that picture and miss the other. Yes, it is true that God chooses nobodies to do important kingdom tasks. But it is not just any nobodies. These “nobodies” are chosen because they are people whose willingness to trust God knows no limits. Both Elizabeth (and Zechariah) and Mary (and Joseph) have been called to walk a journey of faithfulness to God that had and would cost them plenty. It has and will always be the same regardless of the generation or culture.

The third section of Elizabeth’s prophesy ties what is happening in the big story. It is about God’s purpose for Israel, not just about two baby boys being born. It also bears the testimony of the Scripture record. This is consistent with the old testament promises of God recorded over centuries by prophets and others who have listened to God. In other words, what is being spoken ties the current events into God’s big story: the redemption of the world. True prophetic revelation will always do just this.

So, as far as battle lines are concerned, there are none. We see no evidence anywhere of the enemy having access to what is going on. What we see instead are two people following through a brace of invitations from heaven to play a profoundly significant part in the plan of God. They qualified because they chose to be faithful and open to God before an angel showed up. They further qualified when they fully embraced the calling described by the angel, and now they were discovering that this plan involved other people whose testimony and faith would enable them to see and embrace that bigger picture. There is something sad about people who choose to put up fences and barriers everywhere to limit the purposes of God in their lives. Our broken culture keeps assuring us that we are masters of our own space and rulers of our own destiny. We program both the work of the Spirit and the application of the Scriptures so that it conforms to our own preferences and predetermined priorities. This allows us to develop church congregations that are corporate expressions of those limitations. As the process is allowed to continue, we find ourselves building religious structures around those barriers and borders. Both the kingdom and the purpose of God lie beyond the borders we set up. We can worship, pray and engage in all kinds of activities that are carefully (but less and less consciously) designed to accommodate us. We wonder why our prayers are so impotent, why enemy attacks are so brazen and our gatherings so devoid of Holy Spirit power.

By contrast, these two women embraced a single message from heaven and offered themselves to journey to its fulfilment. As such, they were opened to Holy Spirit revelation and a world that was beyond anything they had ever thought about. When Jesus talked about the meek inheriting the earth, his message applied fully and directly to these women. As they met and stayed together in the hill country of Judea their friendship, lifestyle and faith commitment rendered the enemy powerless. To be sure, the day would come when there would be another attack, but while these two babies were being formed in the wombs of their hero mothers, there was no opportunity. Instead, profound downloads of revelation by the Spirit – as is evidenced here and wait, there’s more.

WEAPONS

A few years ago I was making a slow journey through the Psalms. I would take a single Psalm to my place of prayer and read it enough times to get the story. Then I would pray my way through using the inspiration before me. It was a wonderful journey, and I was very powerfully impacted. Not only were there amazing moments and encounters but the experience transformed me. One of my summary insights was to see the link between “The Harp and the Sword.” That was my way of describing David’s intercessory experience. At the time I was influenced a lot by a prayer movement that had taken a phrase from the Book of Revelation: “Harp and Bowl.”[2] Their wonderful approach to intercession involved a focus on worship (harp) and prayer (bowl). My observation from the experience of David, and later, Jesus and Paul was the way intercession was seamlessly connected to the ministry of the gospel and I was worried that the prayer movement was capable of producing people who prayed and worshipped but didn’t seem to be so keen to get out and do the work of the gospel. It seemed to create a false dichotomy so that pray-ers didn’t seem to be very committed to ministry and those doing the work of ministry didn’t seem to be much involved in intercession. We saw two tribes emerge and even the idea that there was a special calling to be an “intercessor.” This has no warrant in either old or new testaments.

So I figured that David (then, Jesus and Paul) had a “Harp and Sword” approach. When David came in from fighting battles with his sword, he put his sword away and picked up his harp – as we see in the Psalms. When he worshipped and prayed, we can see that he brought all of the issues of the battle-field into the place of prayer. Sometimes he struggles deeply with what has or hasn’t happened. The story of each Psalm tells about a journey from pouring out all of the frustrations, fears and foibles associated with fighting battles. Then he gets connected to heaven, and the tenor usually changes. He starts the journey in pain and defeat and ends up in praise and faith. Then he puts down his harp and picks up the sword and goes off to battle once again, filled with confidence and the anticipation of victory. And the cycle repeats again and again. The place of prayer ought to be filled with the issues that arise from the battles we are engaged with, and the battles should be filled with the faith and insight we gain from the place of prayer. The same people who pray should be those who fight and the same people who fight should pray: the Harp and the Sword.

The weapons here are used offensively. Elizabeth speaks unseen reality as she declares what is happening in and around her. That’s a weapon for which the enemy has no countermeasure. She manifests peace and love with Mary – that’s righteousness. It gives the enemy a headache. She declares the salvation that is to come to Israel – that’s the gospel. She has and continues to exercise faith in what God has told her – that’s faith. She honours the favour of God upon her – that’s salvation. She clearly hears what God is saying and embraces it – that’s the word of God. And she prays. So all seven of the Ephesians 6 weapons are here, and the enemy is nowhere to be found.

As I have said previously, there is no reason to assume that if we use these weapons offensively all the time that the enemy will not come near to us. He will. He finds opportunity, vulnerability, circumstances and people to exploit the situation so that he can oppress, influence, confuse and destroy. There will be those times, though, when we find ourselves in circumstances where the presence of God is active and free flowing the enemy will have no opportunity. We should be diligent to embrace the purposes and promises of God, to be open to the leading of the Spirit, be obedient to everything God has said. As we do, we will find many of these occasions.

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

Like Elizabeth, we need to fashion our hearts and minds around what can’t be seen rather than being limited to what can be seen. The promises of God always come as unseen reality. We have a choice to make. Do we go with what we see OR do we place what we do see within the reality framework of what God has revealed but can’t yet be seen – i.e. the kingdom of God reality?

Like Elizabeth we need to understand that the purposes of God may well bring us great personal joy, i.e. bearing a child after being childless but this child needs to be prepared to serve the kingdom of God. That’s a bigger world and a world that requires us to live beyond our own personal desires and preferences. When Mary shows up, the world comes to Elizabeth’s door. I wonder what our response will be when God’s world shows up, and we have to embrace a bigger plan, bigger story and a bigger world than the one we might prefer? That willingness is called faith, and it is an enemy-dart-quenching weapon we need to employ if we are going to see battles being won.

Giving ourselves into the expanded world of God’s purpose brings a flow of revelation and a breathtaking awareness of God’s nature as well as his purpose. He uses nobodies – not just any nobody but nobodies who are faithfully serving where they are when no one else is watching. No one would have thought much about either of these two women by human reckoning. But when no one was watching, they were righteous, and their hearts were open to God. That was their ticket into this amazing “game.”

Faithfulness to one revelation is the entry point for more revelation. As we see in Elizabeth’s house, God made his will and presence known AS they were celebrating what he was doing. We get more when we fully invest in what we have already been given. Jesus said exactly that.[3] Sadly, Christian history is replete with examples of individuals and groups who were privileged to be given fresh insights into Biblical truth. They embraced it, followed it out and then found themselves defining everything only by what they were told. When someone comes with a further instalment, it seems that the people with the previous revelation provide the most ardent opposition to what happens next. Elizabeth and Mary are examples of two people who walked fully in the revelation they had but were also willing to receive more. More came to them when they got together (and there is a little principle all on its own – I reckon more comes when we get together ). It’s not a series of fashion changes. It is the unfolding of a divine story. The Word of God will always move us further toward the end goal. And it is a sword in the hand at every stage.

[2] See Revelation 5:8 “And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.”

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ( read Luke 1:26-38)

BATTLE LINES

As with all of these occurrences, the battle lines are formed at different levels. Let’s start at the biggest arena and work to the smallest. When God sent Gabriel to Nazareth it was a declaration of war against the kingdom of Satan. There are many references to this throughout the New Testament. Here are a few samples:

Now judgment is upon this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out. (John 12:31)The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. (First John 3:8)

Jesus came to overcome the rule of Satan in the world. I should say, he came to make it possible for the rule of Satan to be broken. He modelled it during his ministry and completed it on the cross. A fuller discussion of this matter will have to wait for another occasion. What is more important is to see the visitation of Gabriel to Mary as an act of war. If you want to get a better picture of the way God engages with the enemy, let this picture stay in your mind and wrap around your heart. The way God declares war on the Satan is to send an angel with a message to an unknown girl from an unknown village in a nothing province. Think about it slowly. If you or some earthly organisation were planning to take over the world and enthrone a new king would you/they be likely to do it that way? No way on any day. But this is the kingdom of God happening, not the kingdom of this world. We have to tell ourselves again and again that this kingdom from heaven is totally counter to the culture of the kingdom of this world.

Like the announcement to Zechariah about his soon-to-be-conceived son, John. It happened privately and quietly. The greatest event in the history of the world is about to happen and only one living person knows about it. Sure, there are going to be additional signs when the birth happens, but for now, it depends on one person receiving the divine message and being prepared to live with its implications. We need to remember this principle. When God comes to establish his Son as King of Kings, does so by speaking to a young otherwise undesignated girl. We, like Mary, need to be ready to say, “I am the Lord’s servant.” The angel leaves Mary sitting or standing in the same place, but because she responds, her whole world is about to erupt.

The second arena for battle is between Mary and Joseph (and the members of her family and village). We know that Joseph is going to get his own visit from the angel, but not before he finds out that Mary is pregnant. Scripture is not written like a Jackie Collins novel. We are not privy to any conversation between Mary and Joseph. It did happen, but we can only speculate. First, the word is confirmed, and Mary realises she is pregnant. Rather than giving a reason for celebration, it creates an understandable cloud of controversy. Whatever she said to Joseph didn’t satisfy him. The religious traditions were very specific about what should happen to an unwed girl who became pregnant – public shame and if the letter of the law was fulfilled, stoning to death. You can readily imagine how lame it sounded for Mary to tell the truth: an angel came and told her that she was going to supernaturally conceive and give birth to the Messiah?” Can pigs fly???? We might ask the question as to why God didn’t help Mary out by having the angel show up when she told her story to Joseph, or immediately afterwards. We are told in a different part of the Bible that it was Joseph’s righteousness that motivated him to simply send her away to some other place (Matt. 1:19). There is no information to help us answer that question in this case but there is a consistent pattern throughout the Scriptures. When God speaks to someone, they are always called upon to BECOME the embodiment of that word. It is called, “incarnation.” The Word from heaven becoming flesh” (see John 1:14). There could hardly be a more literal example of this than Mary. She began to carry the fulfilment of the message in her womb. She eventually gave birth to the Messiah. Every part of her life was affected. We need to reject the pressure from our western culture to compartmentalise things, usually for the sake of personal convenience and comfort, and allow the word from heaven to have its full effect. This is at the heart of Mary’s response to the angel, “May your word be fulfilled.” She then carried both the fulfilment of that word and its implications. She had to trust that God would honour her faith. We don’t get to choose the outcome of our obedience. We just get to choose to trust as we obey. That trust has to come from the inside. When Mary became pregnant and Joseph started to make plans for her exile, she had to trust that God would find a way to resolve the struggle – i.e. win the battle. She had no idea he was going to send an angel to Joseph. It is important to note, by the way, that while Joseph’s assumptions were cleared up by the angel, they still had to face the wider family and townspeople. The rumour that Jesus was illegitimate carried all the way to the religious leaders and their insinuation to that effect (see John 8:41).

There would be another battle that Mary (and Joseph) would have to face. They were the ones who had been told he was the Messiah. They would have assumed the default view that Jesus would raise up and army to throw out the Romans and enable Israel to rule the world from Jerusalem. When Jesus failed to fit that picture, instead going about preaching, healing and casting out demons, Mary was among the members of Jesus’ family who concluded that he was mentally ill and went to Capernaum to bring him back to Nazareth (Mark 3:21). And we know that Mary was among those who watched him get arrested, tried and crucified. In the next chapter of Luke, the text tells us that on at least two occasions, Mary saw things and heard things and “treasured and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19,51) These were the battles she had to fight from beginning and even more at the end. It is the battle that comes when you build your life around what God has said. It brings you into conflict with opposing ideas in your own mind, with the opinions and attitudes of others and with circumstances that are carefully orchestrated by the devil to stop the fulfilment of God’s plan. God’s plan was for his Messiah Son to make him known on earth and to reveal the nature and working of his kingdom. Jesus was nothing like any earthly king and his kingdom was nothing like any earthly kingdom. Mary was called to embrace that journey in a unique way. The principle still stands. The message from heaven needed to be embraced for the rest of her life in all kinds of different circumstances and against all kinds of different challenges. It is our inability to do this that has landed us in a place where we lose the transformational power of the gospel of the kingdom and become a pallid religious reflection of our wider community.

WEAPONS

The seven weapons referred to in Ephesians 6 are as follows:

Truth – making known the unseen pertinent God-reality.

Righteousness – making God’s character tangible.

Gospel – declaring God’s saving power and purpose.

Faith – trusting God to intervene to bring about the kingdom of God.

Salvation – taking primary significance and identity from being a child of God.

Word of God – knowing and fully embracing what God has said.

Prayer – engaging in every form of relevant prayer activity related to the situation.

I am sure you will be able to see these weapons deployed through this incident in the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. The truth she made known was to tell Joseph exactly what happened. He couldn’t see it, but her pregnancy by the Holy Spirit was the unseen God reality. Regardless of how he reacted, making truth known is not just for the benefit of the humans involved. It is to strike and the attack potential of the enemy. Her righteousness in all of this was the quietness with which she carried herself at this time and as the story progressed. The gospel message in this situation was that God would fulfil his promise and save her from harm and from the punitive power of religious tradition. She trusted God before she was pregnant and afterwards – that trust was to see God’s full intention fulfilled. She obviously faltered a bit when she and her family thought they should intervene and restrain Jesus because he didn’t seem to be acting like the Messiah they had envisaged, but it was certainly restored by the time of the wedding at Cana when the wine had run out and they needed a miracle (John 2). We don’t have information about the last two weapons, although there is evidence to suggest that Mary had a strong sense of living in God’s favour and was no stranger to prayer.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY?

The visit of an angel with a message from heaven is an act of war. There are no guns, no tanks and no bombs. The world at large is totally unaware. But alarm bells are sounding in the kingdom of darkness. Mary listens to the message and then offers herself to serve its fulfilment. The world knows nothing of this, but again, a bomb lands on the gates of hell. When she becomes pregnant and tells Joseph spiritual minions are commissioned to move Joseph to get rid of her. But they fail. Mary and Joseph join in their commitment to journey along the path of faith and obedience. This is how wars are fought in the realm of the kingdom of God. They don’t need government permission. They don’t need a majority vote. They just need an incarnation to happen. The messenger is gone, and a betrothed young couple become the living embodiment of that message and its custodians. This is also how warfare is carried out in God’s kingdom.

Look at God’s way of choosing. There is a theological term to describe this. It is called “divine election.” It means that God chooses someone to do a job. We have so badly messed this up over the centuries. We think of “chosen” from a human point of view. That is, the chosen person is better than those who are not chosen. This is never the case. God certainly chooses people whose hearts are righteous, but that doesn’ t mean they are more worthy than others. Choosing relates to responsibility. How sad that the people of God from so many generations have taken the view that they are better than the other people. Worse still, that God likes them and hates the other people. The other side of this is the fact that God has never chosen anyone for political, tribal or personally preferenced reasons. He generally tends to choose the unheralded and unlikely just because they don’t come with a bag filled with pride and arrogance. God chose Mary. He can just as likely choose you – and most likely has.

The idea of Mary being impregnated by a work of the Holy Spirit is part of a detailed description of a one-off historical event, but it is also a powerful metaphor of what happens every time God speaks. Just as Mary was challenged to fully embrace what the angel, so it is with us with every word that God has spoken. This applies to the written word as well as when God speaks directly by his Spirit. That word means nothing until it is welcomed and embraced in our heart and becomes part of who we are. The image of a period of pregnancy is a wonderful way to think of things that we carry inside of us that are not yet fulfilled in open experience. I have never been pregnant like Mary was but I have carried a word from heaven inside me that was growing and waiting for the time when it would be seen and known by everyone. As I said, the idea of pregnancy is powerful. I can only observe the strange phenomenon for a woman who has a little one inside of her. These days you can have images from very early on, but this little one is a mystery. Those of us who lived before ultra-sounds had to wait the full term to find out the gender. There were all kinds of theories and signs that were supposed to give a clue, but as the baby in the womb grew the mystery remained. Even the wonder of birth retains a whole world of mystery. Suddenly a husband and wife are invaded by this amazingly small but vibrant bundle of free will. Their lives are totally revolutionised. So it is with the word from heaven. We need to nurture that word, so it grows and when the waiting is over, we need to be fully involved in giving birth and nurturing that word toward its fulfilment.

Have you ever wondered why you can have some amazing encounter with the Spirit of God? You receive a revelation and embrace it with all of your heart. Then all hell seems to break loose. You can even find yourself wishing you never received the word in first place. Sometimes some people are so intimidated by the push back that they stop following and pursuing its fulfilment. Jesus warns us about this in a story he told about seeds in four different kinds of soils. The word can be directly stolen by the devil. It can be intimidated by hardship and extinguished by worldly distractions. Many followers of Jesus read the Bible. A lesser number embrace what they read. A lesser number allow that word to become part of their lives. A lesser number carry that word to its fulfilment and completion. It takes a lot of deliberate effort to bear a child and make the lifestyle choices that ensure its healthy development. There are untold challenges in giving birth. And that’s just the beginning. So it is with the word. It will be resisted and contended by the enemy just because it carries the purposes and redemptive love of God. We have to be prepared for this battle and keep utilising the weapons made available to us to ensure complete fulfilment.

5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. 7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.

QUESTIONS

This biblical research aims to ask the following questions about the assumptions and modelling given by Jesus in the gospels. The working hypothesis here is that Jesus engaged in battle with every work of the enemy, not just on the cross, but throughout his ministry. In addition, I am also suggesting that Jesus never lost a battle. His ministry not only defines the spiritual battle we face each day, but he also models victory. If that is so, then we will discover that we need to modify some of our ideas about what victory represents when we allow it to be defined by the life and ministry of the Son of God.

How were the battle lines drawn up in this incident? How was the presence and dominion of the enemy evident? What does God do to engage in this battle? What do people do to engage in the battle? What happens? What is the nature of the victory? How does this apply to our own circumstances?

BATTLE LINES

The day Zechariah entered the Temple in Jerusalem could not have been more critical as far as the kingdom of God on earth was concerned. The Romans had exceeded their predecessor imperialist rulers, gaining ignominious proficiency in every kind of human injustice. In addition to this, corruption and compromise was the order of the day for Judaism. As always, a quiet righteous remnant remained. Godly men and women lived their lives by avoiding trouble and praying for the kingdom to come. It seems that the closer anyone got to the religious centres of power the more difficult it was to avoid the toxic traditions and their abuses.

Like others mentioned in the New Testament (Mary, Joseph, Simeon and Anna), Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were able to maintain godliness with humility. If you want to think about battles, then this is a day to day battle that is hard to fight. Anyone who has lived under corrupt authority will know this all too well. I heard someone say a few years ago that if a righteous person was elected to public office in Australia they would soon be crucified. We are in a time when people love darkness rather than light, so the systems need to be corrupt to stay in place. It is the same with Biblical truth in the church. There are far too many ungodly leaders and leadership systems. They operate pretty much like their secular counterparts and making it harder rather than easier for ordinary believers to be passionate about following Jesus.

It was because Zechariah and Elizabeth chose to live lives of true godliness that they qualified for an angelic visit and were aware of the prophetic presence of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this was made the more difficult when they were not able to bear children. It was not just the frustration of unfulfilled maternal and paternal desires that needed to be managed. It was the unwritten but publicly assumed idea that if someone remained childless it was because they were being judged by God for some hidden sin. It’s hard to remain righteous when people think you are hiding some sin that has incurred divine judgment.

But on the one day of the year when a priest entered the Holy Place, an angel showed up. After four hundred years of silence that is an astounding event. And it happened in one of the few places where there would be no one to witness it other than Zechariah himself. It seems to be the way of God to bring a word to a man or a woman and for that person to become the embodiment of the word, not just the witness of it. The battle engages and a number of different levels. In the first place, the presence of the angel and his message was the first in the biggest battle, the one that will be won on the cross. The Messiah’s advance party is being secretly announced to one man. John will be born as a priest but will be known for a prophetic ministry that will happen a long way from the Temple precinct. At another level, a godly man who has been praying for a son is being asked to believe God for the fact that, even though the child will be born by natural processes of conception and gestation, it is also a miracle because both of them are well beyond the normal age for childbearing. The small battle is as important as the big battle. This is always the case. Whatever the particulars of our God-given vocation, each battle needs to be won the same way: faith and obedience. When Zechariah starts to think of the angel’s announcement as a rational human being, the angel gives him a little supernatural reminder. He is not going to be able to speak for a little more than nine months. This will be a daily reminder that the kingdom issue is not about normal human experience but about divine power working through ordinary human activity.

The next battle is trying to convince Elizabeth that they need to “try for a baby once again.” He had to do it without being able to talk. There’s a little battle all on its own. I reckon a good portion of prayer, fasting together with a largish slate with an even larger supply of crayons. I don’t want to dwell on the matter, but there are genuine challenges associated with older people trying to conceive. Just ask Abraham and Sarah when you meet them in heaven. They would have a story to tell on the subject. I only point this out because it needs an example of the battles needing to be fought.

We need to be very clear about how the battle is engaged. God sends a prophetic message by angelic visitation to a man who has been praying that he and his wife could have a child. Way after all human hope is gone. The man can’t believe his prayer is now to be answered. His hesitation invokes a temporary supernatural block on his ability to speak. With this increased level of difficulty, he goes home to his wife. They miraculously produce a son by the natural process. This is how God fights battles and this is how his servants wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, spiritual darkness and wickedness. It is when the supernatural works in and through the natural.

The nature of this victory is the birth of a special Spirit-filled prophet and forerunner to the Messiah. This event will be linked to another angelic visitation about which Zechariah and Elizabeth knew nothing. Their initial faith was to live godly lives in a time when Israel’s public faith was compromised. When they received the word from God they obeyed and God worked a miracle to give an old couple a baby boy. Then they began to receive further prophetic revelation and a visit of a young unmarried relative from Nazareth who would give birth to the Messiah about three months after John was born.

HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO US?

Be faithful to God even if the systems and other people are compromising Biblical faith. This is important not only as a qualification for more specific roles, but for its own sake. It is hard to be a radical counter-cultural revolutionary, but every person who seeks the kingdom of God first and lives a lifestyle mandated by the Bible will find themselves at odds with both the religious and the secular culture, just like Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Regardless of how revelation comes – angelic visit or reading the Bible or a prophetic Holy Spirit word, we need to embrace that word until it becomes our lifestyle. Just think how Zechariah and Elizabeth began and continued to live on the basis of this word. First, they tried to have a baby in their old age. Then, they raised this child according to the further prophetic revelation they received.

As they pursued this new purpose they were sovereignly linked to God’s big story. They became part of the birth and life of the Messiah. Then they saw their son take up a ministry that became so confronting that he was imprisoned and then executed. Their obedience immersed them in the bigger story. They were faithful in small ways and became partners with the biggest story in the history of God’s purposes for the world he loves. We have exactly the same opportunity. It is only when we allow the word and purpose of God to shape our lives that God brings us together with people who make up the bigger picture. The kingdom of God is a big but amazingly connected group of people doing an amazingly connected work. Whenever we plug in, through faith and obedience at any point, it is like connecting to the internet. We are directly connected to a world of kingdom people and kingdom work. We will find that God puts us together with all kinds of people we would never have known and with work that we would otherwise not have been aware – and we immediately belong to it.

Everyone who has read the New Testament will know about the Great Commission. It was the last instruction Jesus gave his followers before he ascended to heaven. It is referred to six times. Mark, Luke and John’s gospels each have one. Matthew has two, and there is one in Acts Chapter One. Together they set the goal and parameters for every church and follower of Jesus in every generation. The statements are clear, consistent and straightforward. In saying this, we become immediately aware of a problem. Most churches are not doing it, nor are their members.

Even if some churches allocate some of their resources to this work, it is usually spasmodic and non-strategic. It is more of an optional extra for interested persons. We have even developed spiritual gift surveys that enable followers of Jesus to disregard this command by suggesting that if you don’t have the “gift” for evangelism, then you don’t have the responsibility. Surveys have shown that in most churches less than two per cent of the congregation will be involved in proclaiming the gospel at all. This is amazing,

And we have another problem. When churches do proclaim the gospel, the primary tool is a church program of some sort: a visiting evangelist and some special meetings; the pastor hounding people to bring their family and friends to church and so on. This is usually seen as a way of growing the individual church. When people become disciples, they are often drawn into all kinds of church activities so that their connection with the “outside world’ becomes minimal and their relationship with people far from God non-existent. Then we have a situation where there will be a range of different church congregations meeting in one suburb or town. It is rare for them to think about how they might cooperate to see the gospel proclaimed to every person in their region. They just concentrate on their programs. As a result, there is no plan to do what Jesus told us to do in the words of the Great Commission.

I want to have a look at the scope assumed in the Great Commission statements. I want to allow Jesus’ words to inform us again about the extent of his plan for myself and every other follower in my region (and elsewhere of course). I want to consider what it would take to have a plan that was worthy of what Jesus started. We will see that nearly all of the statements have words or phrases that describe the EXTENT. Having heard this again, we might be more inclined to do what it takes to see that this desire of Jesus is fulfilled – for starters in our region and in this generation.

MATTHEW 24:14

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

The wholeὅλῃ This means every single part. The two English words most commonly used to translate this Greek word are “all” and “whole.” No matter where you are engaged with the gospel the command of Jesus is that we take responsibility for making the gospel known to every part. If it is a family, then it is every member of the family. If it is a suburb, then it is every household in the suburb. If it is a city or a region, then it is every person in every household or workplace in the region.

worldοἰκουμένῃ This is a compound word. The first is the word for house or dwelling; the second part comes from the idea of remaining or staying. It quite logically describes “a place where people stay,” i.e. a home. It occurs fifteen times in the New Testament and is a collective that refers to the inhabited world. The Greeks originally used it to speak about the Hellenistic empire and then it was used similarly about the Roman empire. The thinking was that the supposedly uncivilised people outside of that territory were considered to be sub-human, i.e. not like ‘us.’ Given all people are created equally in the image of God, in this case, it refers to every place where there are people. We aren’t called to preach to the uninhabited places or animals. We are, however, called to preach the gospel everywhere where people are living.

MATTHEW 28:18-20

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Therefore, goπορευθέντες In the Greek language this is an aorist passive participle. Without getting into technicalities, the main verb in this sentence is the command to “make into disciples” (μαθητεύσατε). The sense of the Greek phrase wants us to make people into disciples as we are going into all of the nations. The actions should be simultaneous. We should be going with that intention and doing the work of disciple-making as we are in the process of going.

All the nations πάντα τὰ ἔθνη Again the word “all” is deliberate and specific. If you apply this word to any place at any time you are going to have to identify all of those groups and not leave any out. It doesn’t tell us to go to the ones we like or the ones that seem nice. It just says ‘all.’ There are many ways we can think about the word ‘ethnos’ or ‘nations.’ Today we use this to refer to geopolitical entities. This was nothing like the original Greek meaning. Christian missiologists have described the Biblical meaning much more in terms of small “people groups.” In our society, it probably describes different groups that operate within a community where people gather around ideology or common interest beyond family groups: political parties, sporting clubs etc. The application of Jesus’ words to people like us in settings like ours would work this way. You need to have strategies that will enable disciple-making to happen in every different kind of community group in the Canberra region: sporting clubs, government sections and departments, community groups, ethnic groups etc. – all of them need disciple making enterprises. You need to discover the way to make disciples in a way that is appropriate to each particular people group and be aware that what works in one people group will not necessarily work in other people groups.

MARK 16:15

He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

Go into all the world Πορευθέντες εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἅπαντα Once again this introductory phrase is an aorist participle, denoting that the action happens at the same time as the verb κηρύξατε which is the word “preach” or “proclaim.” As with the former example, the idea here is that the act of proclaiming the gospel should be concurrent with the going. In contemporary circumstances like the ones we find ourselves in this seems impossible. What we have done is to separate being somewhere and the idea of proclaiming the gospel. We go to a lot of places on most days and don’t even think about proclaiming the gospel, let alone to every person. I would suggest that both our sense of inadequacy and the power of our culture to intimidate has successfully caused us to shut up shop. In addition to this, most of the small number of people who remain committed to “preach the gospel” do it in such a way that we feel embarrassed and ashamed. They are either corny or operate like social misfits, immune to the reactions and attitudes of the people around them. We often feel they do the gospel an injustice by their insensitivity. It might be hard to admit, but it is nonetheless true that in most cases we don’t have any concept of what it might look like for this command to be happening any week in our world. And we are mostly unwilling to find out.

to every created personπάσῃ τῇ κτίσει The scope of our task is further identified with these words. A check of various translations will demonstrate that slightly more references to “all creation” and slightly less use the phrase “to every person.” Each of these is valid. What makes the second of the two the more likely is the context. If the command of Jesus refers to the natural world of earth, sea and sky, then we should all be getting ourselves to the top of a high hill somewhere and calling on the trees, waters, air and animal world to put their trust in Jesus Christ. It doesn’t compute at all. If it is personalised, then our objective is to bring the message of the gospel to every person created by God. That IS consistent with what Jesus modelled and also the apostles. This is a compelling reference to the idea of incarnation. We are being told to go INTO EVERYONE’S WORLD. This is exactly what Jesus did. He became so powerfully incarnate that when he began to be revealed as the Son of God, the people in his got so angry that they wanted to kill him – such was the absurdity. They had watched him grow up for nearly thirty years and not once did he give any indication he was anything more than the son of a Nazareth family. Perhaps the insight of this form of Jesus’ commission wants to urge us to remain planted in the “world” with people who are lost from God. So often people come to know Jesus and from then on their social lives are totally lived in some kind of “church-world.” They socialise exclusively with other Christians, they send their kids to Christian schools, and even though they might work and play where lost people are, they don’t intentionally invade their world with loving presence so that lost people get to see, hear or feel anything that would enable them to be connected to Jesus.

And we need to note once again that the command uses the word “all.” For our plan to be true to what Jesus has said, we need to embrace a plan that can see the gospel proclaimed to everyone. As I have said before: if it is family, then everyone in the family. If it is a suburb, then every home in the suburb. If a town or city, then everyone in the city. If a nation, then everyone in the nation. When everyone in every nation has heard and experienced the gospel in a generation our work will be completed. Until that point, we have work to do. In our case, it is not just the work itself, but it is a matter of getting ourselves extracted from all of the things that consume our time and attention that will never contribute to this cause.

LUKE 24:47

And repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

to all nations εἰς πάντα τὰ ἔθνη Literally, ‘into all of the people-groups.’ Much of what has already been said above will apply in this version of the commission of Jesus to the disciples. The fact that the author uses the word, “his” which means “into” gives a strong sense of incarnation. The command is for us to go and become an integral part of some people group with the express goal of proclaiming the message of repentance and forgiveness. Once again the scope is ALL. Every single people group will need missionaries who go there with specific intention. In a culture and society like the one I live in, so much emphasis is placed upon what is self-serving, safely within self-proclaimed comfort zones and strictly self-determined. We do what we want when we want with whom we choose. We construct our comfort-driven worlds around a whole bunch of preferences that have nothing to do with God’s loving intention. To accomplish this, we need to craft churches where it is acceptable to attend where it suits, be involved when it is convenient and to be affirmed in selecting or deselecting our involvement based upon our own preferences. In doing this, our churches operate pretty much on the same basis as every other voluntary organisation – its just that ours revolves around tokens of worship, prayer, Bible study and activity that reference Jesus. He is not revered and passionately followed Lord, but has been domesticated by our cultural preferences to become our panacea.

What would begin to change all of this would be for us to ask the question, “What could we begin to do that if we kept on doing it, would see the message of repentance and forgiveness proclaimed to every people-group in our region, and then to all of the regions beyond?” This would involve us in the task of identifying the people-groups where we already have connection and involvement and then identify further people groups so that we could pray for God to raise up missionaries prepared to “go into” those groups with the express purpose of proclaiming repentance and forgiveness. We would judge our progress on how many times this message was proclaimed, what percentage had yet to see and hear and how we could reach those to whom we had not yet connected. We would unite with others to achieve this goal, and we would pray simply because without Holy Spirit power and miracles it would never happen.

Repentance and forgivenessμετάνοιαν εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν These two factors are consistent with the core message Jesus proclaimed. He called on people to repent[1] and he offered forgiveness[2] I think these two experiences have been keelhauled by streams within the Christian church that take the view expressed so graphically by Jonathan Edwards in his famous revival sermon: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”[3] In this sermon, Edwards described God by saying that he was angrily dangling sinners like spiders at the end of a web over the fires of hell warning them to repent. The problem with this idea is in the fact that it is wholly unsupported by anything found in the life and ministry of Jesus – who was, after all, the full expression of the nature of God and the exact representation of his being.[4] I hold the view that the concepts and meanings of words in the New Testament will best be understood by seeing how they work in and through Jesus and then through apostolic testimony (Acts, Letters and Revelation). If you have a look at the way Jesus called people to repent, there is no instance where Jesus was angry to the point of dropping someone into hell unless they grovelled like a grub. He challenged people to change the way they thought, the way they lived and the word they trusted. Likewise, forgiveness was not measured by the number of tears or the look of anguish. Zacchaeus experienced forgiveness when he realised that Jesus offered redemptive love. The woman caught in adultery was sent away with a simple command. The man let down through the roof similarly received a blessing from Jesus. The forgiveness was the power to walk away from the past and to walk boldly into the vocation God had planned. There was no assuaging of divine anger and no placating of wrath on Jesus’ part. That doesn’t mean there could not be tears and flowing emotion. We learn from Hebrews that Esau’s problem was that he had the tears, but no determination to change his loyalty or his trust.[5]

This form of the great commission makes it clear that the gospel message will always come with a challenge to the strong-willed independence found in all kinds of people – but very obvious in us Aussies. The gospel is a call to change direction, to turn away from the past ways and to be set free from past failures and foibles. It is the decision to place trust in Jesus. Then it is the determination to live according to his commands.

JOHN 21:21,22

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

This version of the commission is quite unique in both contexts as well as content. In terms of this research, there is little direct information about the scope of this command. There are similarities of course. My way of seeking understanding has been to notice ALL the pieces of information given and to interpret them as if they were the only pieces of information I had at my disposal. That provides stage one of my process. Then I add this cache of stand-alone information to the other passages and allow it to either confirm what others have made known or add to it.

As the Father has sent meκαθὼς ἀπέσταλκέν με One small word can point to a substantial matter. I speak in this instance of the word “as.” Remember that these words were spoken at the time of the last supper. What followed was the events leading to the cross, the resurrection and then forty days of special appearances. When Jesus said “as……..” he referred to everything they had heard, seen and witnessed each day of the three years since they were called to become followers, disciples and the apostles. Their task was to replicate the values, principles, strategies and objectives Jesus modelled. It is the same for us. I think those among us who seem prone to focus on one of many peripheral and often speculative issues need to keep referring to words like these from Jesus. Our work needs to replicate his no matter which generation or which culture we happen to be a part of. Jesus is the template. The experiences of Acts and the insights of the other New Testament letters can only give a sharper picture of what Jesus started. They do so in their own culture and century. Jesus must be our primary hermeneutic principle. Only he is the image of the invisible God and the exact replication of God’s nature and purpose. Some ministries seem to build their foundation on Old Testament “shadows”[6] at the expense of the “reality” that is only found in Jesus. Other streams of theology seem to make sections such as the Letter to the Romans the window through which they look at both Jesus and the Old Testament. I am convinced that it must begin and end with Jesus – as the author and finisher of our salvation.

In the first place, we need to sense the same commissioning that Jesus modelled day after day: “my food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.”[7] Instead of being riddled with fear and hesitation we should boldly represent everything we know from God. Jesus never defended truth, he just proclaimed it and allowed it to carry its own authority. We often seem to think that we have to dress up the truth revealed in Jesus to make it palatable to errant self-indulgent western philosophies and culture. Every time we do, we depend less on a work of the Holy Spirit. So often we substitute genuine anointing for human ability. Even if we win an argument, we can lose the real battle. Our battle is for the honour of sonship and daughterhood of God. Often we appeal to people’s minds when we should be appealing to their hearts. Our struggle is for the honour belonging to Jesus as the King. Often we reduce him from being a loving king to be served to a servant who will give us whatever we want.

Jesus showed that serving the kingdom involved seeking to embrace the Father’s initiative, not asking him to bless ours. It meant depending on the full measure of Holy Spirit power and presence, not on human skill and crafted human strategies. Jesus set out to visit every town and village in Galilee and Judea. We should make it our business to offer the kingdom to every part of our own regions and to support others in reaching theirs. Jesus seamlessly kept three contracts: (a) with anyone who came and those he visited, to give them the very best of the kingdom of God. (b) With twelve disciples whom he trained to become apostles and (c) his appointment with the cross. We should read Philippians 2 until it becomes our conviction and then to allow the conviction to become our testimony. Jesus’ story needs to become our story.

All of this and more will need to shape the way we do things. More and more our story needs to evidence the elements that were the core of Jesus’ story. We need to be sent, not choose where we go. We need to learn to do what Jesus did and embrace what we may not prefer. We need to know how to offer the kingdom message and kingdom ministry to anyone and everyone. We need to raise up and multiply disciples. We need to keep an appointment with a place, a time and an event where we can say like both Jesus and Paul, “It is finished.”

ACTS 1:6-8

Then they gathered around him and asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

It must have been an amazing forty days following the resurrection. Jesus was appearing to individuals and groups – Paul tells us, that on one occasion he appeared to a crowd of five hundred people at one time. Forty days is nearly six weeks. And we know what the curriculum was. It was precisely the same subject as he taught for the three years leading up to the cross – namely the kingdom of God. The passage quoted here gives the briefest of summaries as to what was going on, we could say, the “headlines.” What we do have is a record of the last thing the disciples said to Jesus before he ascended. They didn’t know he was ascending of course, but their question, “Are you going to restore the kingdom TO ISRAEL?” is the last question they asked. In the original Greek, the form of the question presumes the nature of the answer. This question assumes a positive answer. Translated in a way that makes this clear in English, they would be saying, “You ARE going to restore the kingdom to Israel at this time, aren’t you?” If you think about it, the very question showed that they had basically missed what Jesus had been saying and doing for three years. They were thinking Israel-centric and Jesus was thinking God-centric. This is what happens with almost every renewal or reform movement. It starts as a force for new and ends up defending what has since become established.

Jesus’ reply is the answer to the question they were not asking. I wonder why the text doesn’t record Jesus tearing his hair out at this point and giving them a stiff rebuke. They were still looking for the kind of Messiah longed for by traditional Judaism – kick out the Romans and let Israel become God’s headquarters on the earth. Another way of putting this would be to say – when are you going to show everyone that we were right and they were wrong? When are you going to give us the status we deserve since we are the people you like best?

Instead, he characteristically points them to what was the more important matter. As implied by the first part of Jesus’ response, he doesn’t deny that there will be a time when God’s people will rule on the earth. [8] In my mind, this must refer to the new heaven and the new earth spoken about in Revelation 21. Until then, carrying the testimony of Jesus to the ends of the earth in the power of the Spirit needs to be our primary purpose.

To paraphrase what Jesus said: they are to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit comes they are to begin a strategy that will see the gospel (making Jesus known OR ‘my witnesses’) made known in three successive phases: first among the people who are like us and are here where we are (Jerusalem) and then to the people like us who are a little further away (Judea), then to the people who are different from us living next to us (Samaria) and finally to all the people-groups we have never known and who may live a long way from us (ends of the earth). I have paraphrased Jesus’ words in this way to provide a simple universal application. I don’t live in Jerusalem. I live in Canberra. A lot of different people involved in missions have made their own comments about the way this version of the Great Commission provides a simple strategy. I have opted for the idea that the words carry both geographic as well as sociological value. It was even more so in the time when the words were first spoken. Where you lived was not just about geography. It was about culture and belonging. Not that it makes much difference to the task in the end.

Our purpose in this paper is to allow the Great Commission statements to inform our decision to fulfil the desire and command of Jesus. We don’t get to choose the scope of this plan. We can’t just wait for people to come and ask us. We can’t just go to the people we like the most. The only boundary line that can be drawn for such a plan will be the one that includes ALL. All the world, all nations, every created person, the ends of the earth. As soon as we hear what Jesus has said, we become aware that we need to be in unity with a lot of other people and work together with them. We also become aware that we need the power of the Holy Spirit. We also become aware that there are powerful barriers and strongholds that, though often unseen, will need to be overcome.

RESPONDING TO THE COMMAND OF CHRIST

If what Jesus has said is true/we need to embrace what Jesus has said in the words of the great commission statements I need to have – or be part of – a plan to proclaim the gospel to

– everyone in my household

– everyone in my extended family

– everyone in my neighbourhood

– everyone in my town or city

– everyone in my nation

– everyone in all of the nations.

If we are to take responsibility for ALL in those categories beyond

Brian Medway

October 2018

[1] Matthew 4:17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Matthew. 11:20 Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed because they did not repent.

Luke 13:1-5 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

Luke 15:7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

21 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

22 Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? 23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? 24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

John 8:7-11 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

[3] This sermon was preached by Rev. Jonathan Edwards in July 1741 in Enfield Connecticut USA as one of the catalytic events sparking a revival in the New England area o the United States and became known as the Great Awakening.

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.

[8] I am aware that there are a variety of views about this. Some people still hold the view that God will rule on the earth from geographical Jerusalem and political Israel. Given my commitment to the view that the kingdom of God defines the people of God, I think the ruling on earth is best described in Revelation 21, 22